In late February in Arlington, Virginia, Claudia Avila Cosnahan, Commonweal’s Director of Mission and Partnerships, served as a panelist at the Leadership Roundtable’s 2024 Catholic Partnership Summit. The year’s theme was Expanding the Tent: Young Adult Leadership and Co-Responsibility in the Church. Claudia’s panel tackled the topic: Today’s Catholic Young Adults: Engaged Diverse, Questioning, Caring, Passionate.

Claudia focused on the Latinx community, noting that U.S.-born young Latinx – not immigrants – have been driving the Latinx U.S. population growth since the 2000s. U.S.-born Latinx young people are invested in the U.S. and all its socio-political complexities because it is their country of origin. For far too long, leadership in the church has considered the Latinx presence as mainly an immigrant presence. She invited participants to become more interested in the nuances of identity when setting pastoral priorities.

Claudia concluded by emphasizing the importance of Latinx church leadership that is in touch with young people’s concerns and needs. As young people continue to disaffiliate from Catholicism and critique institutions in general, the responsibility to engage in topics that matter to young people lies on the institutional Church. She pointed out that the youngest writers published in Commonweal’s pages are interested in writing about the very things that young people in general are concerned about: the environment, LGBTQ+ issues, race, gender, women in leadership, women’s health, and social justice. Young people are best equipped to serve young people. Older generations of leadership must make room for their leadership in all areas of the institutional church, not only within the traditional young adult ministry model.