Three years ago when The Central Minnesota Catholic magazine was launched, we made the decision to include four pages of articles — and a separate magazine cover — for Latino Catholics in our diocese whose primary language for reading is Spanish.
Starting with the January 2022 print edition, we’ll be making a change. Instead of four pages in Spanish separated from the magazine’s English content, we’ll run a selection of stories and columns each month with the English and Spanish versions side by side. The magazine’s front cover will be bilingual. The back cover will include paid advertising and notices about major diocesan events.
Why are we doing this? The magazine staff, with the support of Bishop Kettler, believes this is another step to better serve our Latino sisters and brothers and foster a stronger sense of community among all Catholics in the diocese as One Body — gathered, nourished and sent together to spread the Good News. While we don’t have the resources yet for an entirely bilingual magazine, this is an important next step.
Our efforts to serve the diversity of Catholics in our diocese, specifically the Latino community, have evolved over the years. For many years, The Visitor, the newspaper predecessor of The Central Minnesota Catholic, featured an occasional article in Spanish, usually around the December feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In February 2017, the newspaper began publishing a smaller, quarterly version in Spanish: El Visitante. Then came the four monthly pages in the magazine. The increased frequency of featuring Spanish content was an improvement, but having it separated from the English content still presented challenges. Some Spanish speakers wondered why some content was only in English. Other readers who didn’t speak Spanish wanted to know what the stories on those four pages were about. The “separateness” of the content also didn’t foster the kind of unity and inclusiveness we want to exemplify. We hope the new approach does a better job. Watch for it starting in January.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at jtowalski@gw.stcdio.org or 320-258-7624.