GREENWOOD – The Redemptorist community serving Hispanic Catholics in Greenwood has been nominated for the Catholic Extension Lumen Christi Award for the second time. Last year, the community got more votes than almost any other nominee in the first portion of the process. This year they are again asking Catholics in Mississippi for their support.
Every year, Catholic Extension’s Lumen Christi Award honors an individual or group working in one of America’s mission dioceses who demonstrates how the pow

Members of the Redemptorist Manz community accompanied Bishop John Manz on a pastoral visit to Hispanics in the diocese in October 2015. Bishop Manz is a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on refugees and migrants. The Redemptorists took him out into the fields and factories where they are ministering to Hispanics across the diocese, but especially in the Delta. It is this work that has earned them a nomination for the Lumen Christi Award. (Mississippi Catholic file photo by Sister Maria Elena Mendez, MGSsP.)

er of faith can transform lives and communities. Lumen Christi recipients are the hidden heroes in our midst. They bring light and hope to the forgotten corners of our country and inspire those around them to be the “Light of Christ” as well.
Past recipients of the Lumen Christi Award, Latin for “Light of Christ,” have included priests, women religious, and lay leaders from across the nation.
The Lumen Christi Award is accompanied by a $50,000 grant to support the recipient’s ministry.
The process has two phases. During the first, people can vote for the ministry they think is the most deserving. From these votes, Catholic Extension selects finalists. A panel from the organization selects the final winner.
The Redemptorists came to Mississippi in 2014. The order reorganized in the late 1990s, forming teams of ministers who can go to different dioceses to help with Hispanic ministry. The team based in Greenwood travels throughout the Delta. They are creative in their outreach to the often invisible Hispanic community – offering reconciliation, Mass and prayer at restaurants, farms and trailer parks, seeking out opportunities to interact with families and making themselves available to parishes when needed. The priests travel quite a bit, going to where the people are to establish relationships. Their hope is to help the community develop lay leaders and ministers from within.
Voting takes place online, visit https://www.catholicextension.org/2016-lumen-christi-award-nominees#DioceseG to cast a vote daily.