Pope Addresses Pastoral Needs of Eastern Rite Immigrants in U.S., Canada

posted on: Jan 14, 2016

When people talk about immigration helping to fill empty pews in Catholic churches in the United States, the images that comes to mind are of Mariachi masses and posada celebrations.

But two groups of new Catholic immigrants, who bring a very different sense to their liturgical celebrations, are growing fast enough that Pope Francis recently established new dioceses for them in North America.

And with church traditions deeply rooted in the Middle East and India, liturgies celebrated by these ethnic groups are quite out of this world.

Source: aleteia.org

The Syrian community is growing so rapidly in Canada that the Pope has appointed a new Bishop for Syrian Catholics.