September 2022
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This chapter chronicles the creation of a pan-Latino Catholic church from the 1950s to the early 2000s in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While the church developed in part due to ethnic succession, this formation was possible because the congregation had a history of forming pan-Latino spaces that preceded the parish and went beyond it, including via a community organization. This chapter begins with an examination of Mexican and Puerto Rican experiences in pan-Latino religious spaces before they had a parish. It then traces white flight in the early 1950s from a particular neighborhood and from St. Joseph the Worker. Simultaneously, it examines how Latinos slowly moved into previously all-white housing near St. Joseph and eventually the church. From the 1960s and 1970s, St. Joseph emerged as a pan-Latino church. Over the next thirty years, the church became a site that is home to parishioners from various Latin American countries.