Cultural Diversity in the Church

Transitions, Gratitude, and Hope for the Future

Chairman’s Reflection

Transitions, Gratitude, and Hope for the Future 

Most Revered Arturo Cepeda | Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit | Chairman of the Committee on Cultural Diversity |

Dear brothers and sisters, 

Fall seems like an appropriate time for me to reflect on transitions. At the end of the Bishops’ Plenary Assembly in November 2024, I will be handing over the chairmanship of the Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church to my esteemed brother Bishop Robert Brennan of Brooklyn, who was elected last year to take over the reins this November. He will be forming a new committee with new members and subcommittee chairs. 

I am very grateful that the bishops elected him, as I know he strives every day to be aware of and responsive to the needs of the different cultural and ethnic communities in his very diverse diocese, while also inviting in their gifts and traditions to help build our one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I leave the committee in very good hands indeed!

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Jubilee 2025: An Opportunity to Be Visible Signs of Hope

By: Maria del Mar Muñoz-Visoso, M.T.S.| Executive Director, Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, USCCB

What is hope? What gives you hope and how can you give it to others? In 2025, the Catholic Church invites us to dedicate an entire Jubilee Year to exploring this virtue of hope. 

On December 24, 2024, Pope Francis will inaugurate the Jubilee Year 2025 with the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, followed by those of the three other major basilicas in Rome. The Holy Year will conclude on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2026.

Celebrated every 25 years, a Jubilee is a special moment of grace, forgiveness of debts and of reconciliation. We are encouraged to contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation and to examine our relationships with God, with one another, and with God’s creation. It is a time to “bring good news to the captives” to dispel whatever it might be that is holding us prisoners, be it physical or spiritual.

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