"Immigrants and Catholic Evangelization in the United States" by Archbishop Jose Gomez

The Spanish missions to Florida date back to the sixteenth century. The first martyr to die on American soil, Father Juan de Padilla—who came to our country from Mexico and evangelized in Texas, California, and elsewhere—was killed in southern Kansas sometime in the early 1540s. The first Holy Mass was celebrated on the banks of the San Antonio River in 1691. Mission San Diego de Alcala, the first of California's Franciscan missions, was founded in 1769. From their earliest settlement, these lands were Catholic, Christian. And these lands were, from the start, immigrant lands, meeting places of cultures. By reflecting on our evangelical and immigrant past as Catholics in America, what can we, the "Pilgrim Church" in America, learn about the future of Catholic evangelization in this country?

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