By Catholic News Service

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (CNS) — A campaign launched Dec. 12 to enroll 1 million Hispanic students in Catholic schools by 2020 and the study that prompted it is “a challenge to the Church to get the word out and spread the good news in the Hispanic community,” said Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry of Los Angeles, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ education committee.

The Catholic School Advantage campaign comes out of a 65-page report released Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadaulpe, by a task force commissioned by the University of Notre Dame.

“The message of Our Lady of Guadalupe, that culture is enlivened by faith, challenges us to open for Latino children the rich opportunity of a Catholic school education,” said Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, chairman of U.S. bishops’ Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church.

Jesuit Father Allan Figueroa Deck, executive director of the bishops’ Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, said the Catholic school initiative posed an important challenge to Catholic education in the United States.

A key finding of the report showed that while more than 75 percent of Latinos in the U.S. are Catholic, only 3 percent of Latino children currently attend Catholic schools while public schools across the country have seen a rapid growth in the number of Hispanics.

The report also said public schools have not served Latino students well, noting they are behind their peers on most measures of educational achievement. According to the report, Latino students fare much better at Catholic schools where they are 42 percent more likely to graduate from high school and two and a half times more likely to graduate from college than peers who attend public schools.

“Much is at stake. No less than the future generation of leaders for our country,” said task force co-chair Juliet Garcia, president of the University of Texas at Brownsville. “Catholic schools must remain a steady and strong conduit for the many new generations of Latinos at their doorstep,” she said in a statement.

To improve education outcomes for more Latino children, the task force seeks to double that 3 percent in Catholic schools to 6 percent — from 290,000 to 1 million — in the next decade.

The task force was established one year ago by Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame. It is co-chaired by Holy Cross Father Joseph Corpora, director of university-school partnerships for Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education.

The task force includes more than 50 national leaders representing the Latino community, the Catholic Church, academia, government, business, philanthropy, and elementary and secondary education.

For some members of the task force, the connection to Catholic education is deeply personal. Former Undersecretary of Education Sara Martinez Tucker said her years at a Catholic school “changed the trajectory” of her life and she wants “all Hispanic children to have that chance.”

“The Latino presence, more than any other factor, offers Catholic education the opportunity to renew itself and face the vexing challenges of the 21st century. We are being presented with a fundamental choice that we ignore at our peril,” said Father Deck.

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