Latin American Leads Key Arlington Apostolate

Hoyos was born in the city of Buga, the eighth of 12 children. After seminary, he taught religion and philosophy, and he later served four years as a high school principal. He was ordained in 1984, and joined the Arlington diocese in 1988. His first assignment was as parochial vicar at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More. In 1993, he moved to St. Anthony of Padua in Falls Church, where he served until 2001. Most recently, he was the pastor of Holy Family Parish in Dale City.

Hoyos said the job's biggest -- and most pleasant -- surprise so far is that his pastoral duties far exceed his administrative ones.

"You need to be off-site, in the hospital or teaching in the evenings," said Hoyos, who as part of his new duties visits a different church every other week.

At the end of this month, he will begin leading a weekly class in Spanish for the church's lay leadership, and he expects to be a regular guest of youth groups and bible-studies classes throughout the diocese.

Hoyos will continue to write a monthly column for the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Grafica and host a television program and radio show in the Central American country. He makes about six mission visits to El Salvador a year. He also has a Sunday program on Arlington radio station WZHF 1390 AM.

And he will continue working with Mapavi, a local nonprofit that he helped found in 1992. The group, which for years has provided relief to those facing medical crisis, has recently begun focusing on stemming gang violence. Hoyos also is an advocate for reducing the stigma of HIV/AIDS among Latinos.

Hoyos said he hopes his actions will help to spread the Gospel and enlarge the church's outreach to the community.

"Sometimes I feel I am crazy because I do too many things, but I do them in the name of the church," he said.

Hoyos lives at St. Philip Parish in Falls Church, where he will also celebrate Mass on occasion. About one-quarter of the congregation is Spanish-speaking, and many attend the Spanish-language Mass on Sunday. In addition, a number of those who come to the parish seeking help -- unemployed or otherwise in need -- are Hispanics who are more comfortable dealing with the church than with a government agency, said the Rev. Kevin Walsh, pastor at St. Philip. Walsh said he hopes that Hoyos will use what he called his unique gift for connecting with people to raise money for relief causes, advocate more strongly for the Hispanic community and to recruit more Hispanics to the priesthood.

Although Walsh speaks Spanish fluently and spent two years in Latin America, he believes Hoyos's background in Latin America will help him forge a special bond with the local Hispanic community.

"You can do your best at serving the Spanish population, but there's a certain identification," Walsh said. "There was this increased joy just seeing someone up there who looks like them. Consciously or unconsciously, they might think, 'He understands me more.' "

Hoyos's duties will include organizing a number of cultural festivals. He said celebrating Latin American culture will contribute to unifying the diverse ethnicities of the area by helping them to understand each other better.

"The position he holds now is key," St. Anthony's parishioner Luz Daleney said in Spanish. Daleney, 66, also runs the religious bookstore at St. Anthony's.

"He'll be able to help all the Hispanics in the Catholic Church even more."

Hoyos has known Daleney, a native of Bolivia, for more than 15 years. He officiated at the marriage of her daughter and baptized two of Daleney's grandchildren. She has sought his counsel on various problems and trusts him as a spiritual guide. But the priest made his greatest impression on her, she said, in the way he has helped the poor, those who are in the country without papers and all who are generally in need, providing moral and financial support.

"Without him, we would be orphans," she said. "This is the best thing that could have happened."