At Home in the Parish

by David Dufek | July 9, 2026

How do you form lay ministers who make Hispanic Catholics feel, not as guests, but at home in their own parishes?

For over a decade, Mayra Moriel de Bañuelos has been answering that question one class at a time. If they don't come, she said, "go and look for them."

“Recognize that they are there,” she said. “Invite them to participate. Include them in the table where the decision is being made.”

Bañuelos is the Diocese of Des Moines' coordinator of Hispanic Ministry, and she has shepherded the Diocese's Hispanic Lay Formation program through its first six classes. The program began with a request from then-Bishop Richard Pates: form Hispanic men for the diaconate. She found no diaconate formation in Spanish available to the Diocese, but the University of St. Mary of the Lake, in Mundelein, Illinois, offered a two-year lay-ministry program in Spanish instead.

As she remembers it, Bishop Pates replied: “If we don't have deacons in formation, we [can] have people formed to do ministry.”

This year, the program crossed a state line. In partnership with the Archdiocese of Omaha, faculty now travel for a second monthly weekend serving the Council Bluffs and Omaha students together. The current class that just graduated, the Diocese’s sixth, numbered 26 students in Des Moines, 10 in Council Bluffs, and 20 in Omaha. A grant secured by Father Litto Thomas, parochial vicar of St. Anthony Parish in Des Moines, covered the parish share of tuition this year, a contribution Mayra said had at times been hard for parishes to carry.

The heart of the program is the pastoral project. Through a workshop Bañuelos calls The Analysis of the Reality, students study their own parish, name a real need, and match it to gifts they have to offer. Each student is encouraged to share that analysis with their pastor, a conversation Bañuelos calls “an aha moment” for both. Every graduate then implements that project for two years.

This year’s projects, Bañuelos said, span the Diocese. At Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart in Ankeny, a parishioner is working alongside the parish's religious-education team to welcome Spanish-speaking families more intentionally, gathering them each year to affirm that they belong. That parishioner, Jen Cakinberk, calls her project Seed of Faith. “The church is for all,” she said. “Nobody's going to be a prosthetic leg in the body of Christ.” She points to feast days as the place where the parish becomes one community: “We have feast days that we can share together as a community, and we can have our rosaries as a community. Bringing a little bit of that passion of our faith into the church will be a way to bring them together.”

At Christ the King in Des Moines, Diego Garcia is taking on a different kind of work: digitizing decades of parish sacramental registries, books going back to the founding of the parish, many entries written in cursive that, he said, “might as well be scribbled,” and that the office can take hours to search. He frames the project as lowering a barrier. “If the sacraments aren't readily available to people or if we make things harder than they need to be — these little things affect the community in a positive or negative way,” he said. “Being in order here makes us in order everywhere else. It makes approaching the church a lot easier.”

In Council Bluffs, a graduate plans to plant a chapter of the Christian Family Movement, a fellowship that meets in Des Moines and Omaha. Another graduate has built a grief ministry, which Bañuelos called a parish response to something the parish itself was missing. Other current projects include sacramental preparation, hospitality, Marian devotion, parent formation, and outreach to the homeless and to women in pregnancy crisis.

The program’s first course is Encuentro, encounter with Christ. The class asks students to recall every encounter with God they have had since childhood, and to carry one daily question into prayer:

“Pray and ask God every single day,” Bañuelos said. “How do you want me to serve you, God?”

In the years since, the Diocese has found a source for forming men for the permanent diaconate. Three of those men (Jose Santos, Marco Balmaceda, and Ernesto Lemus) came through this program first. The Diocese has retained the lay formation program nonetheless, on the strength of its fruits.

The fruits of the program, Cakinberk said, run beyond the projects themselves. “It's a great opportunity for lay persons to take the course to deepen their understanding of the faith and fall in love with Christ even more,” she said, “and be able to share that with others in a very meaningful way.”

The seventh class begins in September. 

Pastors can nominate candidates; interested Catholics can speak with their pastor or contact the diocesan Office of Hispanic Ministry at 515-237-5011.

_{Andrea C. Calderon and Diego Garcia Orellana, of Christ the King Church in Des Moines, work with volunteers to digitize decades of parish sacramental registries as part of their ministry to help their parish.}

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Pastoral Projects — 2025–2026 Hispanic Lay Formation Class

• Open Hands — Responding to basic and pastoral needs of the poor and homeless

• Power of Prayer — Helping people to pray

• Marriage Preparation

• Grieving Project — Accompaniment during the grieving process

• Seed of Faith — Integration of Hispanics in the parish

• Marian Project — Helping the parish with all Marian festivities

• Bible for Families — Helping families to pray with the Bible

• Serving at Mass — Serving and inviting others to serve

• Walking with Mary — Celebrating the different advocations of Mary at the parish

• Hearts Filled with Faith, Love, and Hope — Helping crisis
  pregnancy centers and pregnant women in need

• Welcome and Hospitality Project

• Faith Formation for Parents and Families

• Men’s Group

• Prayer and Fasting — Guiding people in prayer and fasting

• Christian Family Movement (Council Bluffs) — Helping the Des Moines Federation of the Christian Family Movement organize Spanish-language chapters in the Council Bluffs area

• Ministry of the Sick