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Pope John Paul II made his first visit to the United States since 1987. The pontiff along with 170,000 Catholics from around the world came to celebrate World Youth Day. A commemoration of Catholicism and religious worship. American Catholic clergy are hoping that as a result of the fanfare, traditionally Catholic Latino communities will renew their interest in the church. But as Ancel Martinez reports from Denver, many Catholic parishes are confronted with apathy and a church parishioners feel is sometimes too conservative.

[Church Bells]

One parish that wants to avoid the image of state Catholicism in apathy among Catholics is our Lady of Guadalupe. It's Adobe and Brick colonial style church and courtyard is just across the railroad tracks from Denver’s sleek office buildings. The pastor just ended a three-week fast to protest gangs that dominate summer street life around here. Our Lady Guadalupe is housing, hundreds of pilgrims celebrating World Youth Day. Church Deacon Alfonso Sandoval says for Mexican Americans it should be a time for reflection.

If anything, like I say, part of their culture is their faith in going to church. I think that the presence of the Holy Father is going to be significant for the youth in the sense that they were starting to drift away, not attending mass and not attending sacraments wasn't important for them, it just was not a priority. There's a lot of other priorities going on in their lives, but with this visit, I think it'll help a lot of them just take stock of what their faith's really all about.

The Pope chose Denver as the biannual World Youth Day site because it's a relatively young city and its Hispanic population represents the fastest growing segment of the church in America. But the nearly all Anglo national conference of Catholic bishops only grasped in the 1980s how important Latinos are to the survival of the American church. Father Lorenzo Ruiz works these streets reaching out to Chicanos and Latin American immigrants.

This is an area where the American church, the Anglo-American church and the Hispanic church met. The American church took over this area and again, they were not sensitized or aware of the church already existing here, totally unaware of the fact that there was a church here and people with a different culture and different values and a different way of expressing wonderful and beautiful Catholicism.

When Mexican Americans were ignored, that's when the separations began with the traditional Catholic Church, such as the new Mexican set known as the Penitentes decades ago. And even today, evangelical churches are making inroads to a once all Catholic culture.

[Church music and signing]

The Church of Christ Elam holds thrice weekly services in the basement of the circa 1900s Methodist church in the center of Denver's Latino neighborhood. Furnishings are minimal, fold up chairs, linoleum floor, and a small stage, several teenagers sing, a few dozen followers wave their hands and clutch Bibles, Pastor Manuel Alvarez, explains Catholicism simply isn't spiritual enough for many, so they seek other faiths.

They found something that is not a religious but a new experience with God when they can talk to God and have a relationship with God, not with religious or not with that organization, but a special relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Vatican is now paying special attention to Latinos in the United States because in part of their support of conservative issues like the ban on women serving as priest and opposition to artificial birth control and abortion, but there are even schisms among Latinos. Sister Irene Muñoz works for the Denver Catholic Archdiocese Hispanic outreach program.

I know women are speaking out and saying we want a fuller role in the church in many ways, and I truly see that. I truly believe that women are called to do more than perhaps what we're doing. And I know there are many of our sisters, my sisters that are called even more into become ordained priest and they were saying, look at us, listen to us.

The challenges facing the church in its quest to resolve these issues as well as retain Catholic Hispanics will remain long after the excitement of the pope's visit to Colorado in this continent subsides. For Latino USA I'm Ancel Martinez in Denver.