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This article is one of a series on Catholic higher education. You can view all the stories here.

AUSTIN, Texas (RNS) — Despite the graduates’ best efforts to remain composed, the tears were flowing freely in the small auditorium at St. Edward’s University, which was hung with the lacy colors of papel picado and the faint scent of carne asada wafting in from outside. 

In a graduation ceremony last December for six Latino students, many either undocumented or among the first to attend college in their families, Jackeline Guajardo, one of the graduates, told the group, “Remember that your success is not just yours, but a collective triumph for those who have supported you and those who will follow in your footsteps.”

Days later, they would walk with their classmates at St. Edward’s commencement, but on this day, each graduate crossed the stage arm-in-arm with their parents before having serape-style stoles placed around their shoulders. Guajardo, who grew up with English as her second language, teared up as she said, “I’ve always felt stupid and unprepared every single time I stepped foot into a classroom.”

Family, community and the college, which offered additional support systems, “made us feel smart, confident and capable.”

Only 1 in 5 U.S. Hispanic Catholic adults have a college degree. They are less than half as likely as white Catholics to have a bachelor’s degree. Even as the U.S. church becomes increasingly Latino, however, U.S. Hispanic students make up less than 20% of undergraduate students at Catholic colleges, according to 2024 data from the Department of Education. That lags far behind the estimated 6 in 10 U.S. Catholics under the age of 18 who are Hispanic, and even behind the more than 1 in 3 U.S. adult Catholics who are Hispanic.

Experts say that lag has a tangible impact on the church and diminishes Latino representation among priests, religious sisters, Catholic school teachers and administrators, as well as among influential Catholics in secular society.

“ When Latinos, by and large, have been absent from these systems of education that have benefited so many millions of Catholics in this country,” said Hosffman Ospino, professor of Hispanic ministry and religious education at Boston College, “ many of them are missing out on the spaces that would allow them to consider these ecclesial vocations.”

Historically, Latino high school graduation rates were significantly lower than the national average, with only 58% percent of Hispanic young adults having graduated high school in 1996 — about 30 points behind the total young adult figure. But as that gap has narrowed — by 2021, 89% of Hispanic young adults were high school graduates — Latinos remain underrepresented in Catholic higher education.

Experts point to a variety of reasons. Much of Catholic higher education is concentrated in the Northeast, away from areas with the highest concentrations of Latinos. There’s a perception that Catholic higher education is too expensive, especially if schools don’t effectively communicate about financial options that change the sticker price.

There are also few Latinos in the Catholic education pipeline. While the majority of Catholic college students attended Catholic grade schools, Latinos are underrepresented in Catholic K-12 education, at 17% of enrollment. If Catholic universities aren’t creating community partnerships beyond Catholic K-12 schools, “ you’re not going to be serving Hispanic students at the higher ed level,” said Deborah Santiago, CEO of Excelencia in Education, an organization dedicated to improving Latinos’ higher education achievement.

But more importantly, Latino leaders say, Catholic colleges must create an overall culture of Latino belonging at every level of the institution.

Esteban del Río, director of the Frances G. Harpst Center for Catholic Thought & Culture at the University of San Diego, said: “ If you really want to join with the people you hope to be part of your community, you have to reflect and discern: What about our assumptions has been exclusionary? What about our normal operations may be producing the experience of marginalization?”

The question is not, said del Río, “ How do we replace those that are in the center with these ideas that are in the peripheries?” but instead, “ How do we enlarge the center?”

At the University of San Diego, del Río said, community-engaged learning has been particularly successful in strengthening relationships with Latino communities. As opposed to other models, in which the college and its students engage in one-off service events in a community, community-engaged learning involves investing in ongoing accompaniment and seeing the wisdom and resources in that community.

That focus is a common thread for many leaders in Latino inclusion in Catholic higher education.

At Dominican University, in the Chicago area, where nearly 7 in 10 students are Hispanic, Jaqueline Neri Arias, assistant vice president for Hispanic-serving and culturally sustaining initiatives, said that the university’s Family Academy has been a way to include Hispanic students by making families part of the educational process.

In monthly Family Academy sessions given in English and Spanish, any Dominican family can meet other families and learn about how to support their students. By attending five sessions, families can enroll their student in a summer class at no cost.

But every facet of the university is involved in meeting the needs of Hispanic students, Neri Arias said, from culturally responsive programming and ministry to support for students with challenges due to immigration status, first-generation status or finances. That support might look like running a food pantry or treating all U.S. resident students in the financial aid process as domestic regardless of their citizenship status.

Dominican, like other Catholic universities serving Hispanic students, has been hit hard by the Trump administration’s cuts to higher education, including funding specifically for Hispanic-Serving Institutions. 

Donna Carroll, a former president of Dominican who now heads the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said she had heard anecdotally that many Catholic institutions have lost federal funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, “causing institutions to scramble financially, and in cases, make difficult budget decisions.”

With a third of Catholic colleges classified as HSIs or emerging HSIs, the cuts will impact all students, not just Hispanic students, she said.

While the funding cuts are a serious challenge, Neri Arias said, for Catholic universities in financial jeopardy because of low enrollment, Latino inclusion can be a fiscally responsible priority. “Our culturally sustaining initiatives are crucial to the survival of Dominican,” she said.

St. Edward’s is the only Catholic institution to have earned the Seal of Excelencia, awarded by Excelencia in Education to institutions that compile data to demonstrate a robust infrastructure to recruit and retain Latino students.

Some of those strategies include having faculty reach out to prospective students and making sure information sessions for their families are held in English and Spanish. “ We wanted to make sure that when parents left, they left knowing that the information that was given to them was in their native language because it’s a scary moment for them, having their sons and daughters leaving,” said Sonia Briseño, director of the College Assistance Migrant Program, adding that many have never set foot on a college campus.

When admitted students arrive at St. Edward’s, they are paired with a success coach and a career coach. Other supports follow, such as peer cohorts for mentoring, programming for first-generation students, a mental health center, emergency laptop assistance for students who cannot afford them and experiential learning opportunities, such as internships and research.

“ That’s meeting the students where they are. And if they’re behind, it’s pulling them up. If they’re ahead, it’s also taking those students and encouraging them to do other things,” said Brian Smith, a political science professor and vice provost for academic policies/student success.

Lazaro Calvillo, a philosophy major who hopes to become a lawyer, told Religion News Service that academics aren’t the only challenge. In addition to an internship, “I work in a movie theater, so that, plus balancing school has made it relatively difficult.”

A major program that primarily serves Latino students is the College Assistance Migrant Program or CAMP, in which the federal government has historically funded first-year expenses for the children of migrant farmworkers. St. Edward’s has covered tuition for the next three years.

Briseño, the director of CAMP and an alumna of the program, credits it with allowing her to go to college. So does Christina Vasquez, a nursing student. “I’m so thankful for them because without them I wouldn’t be here,” she said.

But CAMP has come on the Trump administration’s chopping block. Gwendolyn Schuler, a St. Edward’s spokesperson, declined to answer how federal funding cuts would impact the university. But Richard Bautch, executive director of the university’s Holy Cross Institute, which promotes the university’s founding charism, said that cuts to CAMP present a challenge to the university’s mission of bringing hope, through God’s providence, to places without resources. 

The funding cuts eclipse hope, Bautch said, but “we need to work so that we can move to a new place where hope is again strong and prominent.”

A photo display of persecuted Christians in Iraq and Nigeria can be seen at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C., until Feb. 8, 2026. / Credit: Madalaine Elhabbal/CNA

Washington, D.C., Dec 3, 2025 / 13:50 pm (CNA).

A discussion featuring Father Atta Barkindo and Father Karam Shamasha breathed life into a photo exhibit featuring the “forgotten faces” of persecuted Christians in Nigeria and Iraq on Tuesday.

The photo display can be seen at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C., until Feb. 8, 2026. Stephen Rasche, a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, who spent years serving persecuted Christians in Iraq and Nigeria, said he hopes people will see “the spark of human dignity” in his photographs of Iraqi and Nigerian Christians on display.

The Dec. 2 discussion, titled “Seeing the Persecuted and Displaced: Experts Tell Their Stories,” organized in part by the Knights of Columbus, comes amid calls for the U.S. to take concrete action toward the Nigerian government after President Donald Trump announced his decision to designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern (CPC).

Rasche was a founding member of the Catholic University in Erbil in 2014. According to his bio, he has served as an official representative to the Vatican Dicastery on Refugees and Migrants, and belongs officially to the historical commission to the Vatican postulator in the cause of Father Ragheed Ganni, a servant of God, and three Iraqi deacons who were murdered in June 2007.

Alongside Rasche’s photos of Nigerian Christians, Barkindo said the persecution of his community in Nigeria is happening on two levels. “The first level is the level of government policy,” he said, “and the second level is the physical violence that we have seen and continue to see in Nigeria.” 

Barkindo said before Nigeria became a country, there were two existing Islamic caliphates in the north: the Kanem Borno Empire and the Sokoto Caliphate, both of which had diplomatic relationships with the Ottoman Empire and “were fully established as a pure Islamic territory.” After the British destroyed these empires and installed constitutional democracy, he said, “the grief that followed the dismantling of the Islamic empires actually never left northern Nigeria.” 

On a policy level, he said, the government then established sharia law, shuttered Christian mission schools and other institutions, and made it “increasingly difficult” for Christians in the north to participate in civilian life. 

“The ideology was very established, and that was what now led to the physical violence that we now see in Nigeria,” Barkindo said. 

“The most important thing is that the violence evolved over time,” he said. “It evolved because there was a complete and massive failure of the government to deal with the insecurity and the situation.” 

As director of The Kukah Centre, Barkindo has led grassroots efforts to bolster security in Nigeria. He holds a licentiate degree in political Islam and interreligious dialogue from the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome and a doctorate from the SOAS University of London. 

In an interview with CNA, Barkindo described his efforts with The Kukah Centre to promote peace throughout Nigeria’s 36 states. “We have the National Peace Committee that mediates in elections, but they don’t have the gift of bilocation,” he said, explaining how the center goes to states where the Peace Committee cannot reach and trains its civilians in mediation and data collection on early warning and early response for security threats. 

“If they observe serious issues and collect intelligence, they can flag that with us at the national level. We reach out to the government and they’re able to mitigate the situation before it turns into crisis,” he said. The Kukah Centre has done this in 23 states so far and hopes to expand its reach to all 36 states before next year’s elections. 

Reflecting on the evening’s discussion, Barkindo said “the willingness of the American people to just listen” had struck him. 

“America, I don’t want to sound too political, is such a significant country right now globally: When Trump spoke, the whole of Nigeria shook,” he said with emotion. “It’s like for the first time Christians now have somewhere to run to because we have been shouting and speaking for years.” 

Persecution in Iraq

During his testimony, Shamasha also noted the deeply engrained presence of Islamist ideology in Iraq, where he said “we are not dying in the streets today as it was in 2014, but our persecution is different today … there is a lot of discrimination against Christians in this land.” 

Shamasha recounted his experience of persecution, which began in 2003 while at a seminary in Baghdad, which closed several times while he was a student. He was eventually forced to leave in 2005 for Erbil, the Kurdish region of Iraq. He became a parish priest in the Nineveh Plains, then fled once more to Erbil in 2014 with the invasion of ISIS. 

It was during this time that the Catholic University of Erbil was founded. While the Knights of Columbus helped to support and feed the Iraqi Christian community, Shamasha said, the university sought to help young people to not only survive but also “to live with dignity” and eventually become leaders, he said.

“Thanks to God, we are still there,” the Iraqi priest said. “We are fighting to remain not just numbers in these countries, but we are fighting to, in fact, be a real member that can shine, that can give light to all the people that they are.” 

Shamasha holds a doctorate and master’s degree in moral theology from the Pontifical Alphonsian Academy in Rome as well as degrees in canon law, interreligious studies, and priestly formation from the Gregorian University, Lateran University, and the Congregation for the Clergy. 

(RNS) — People who leave tight-knit religious communities often feel anger, resentment or hurt toward religious leaders, family members or co-religionists in the group.

But what if they decided to forgive — themselves, their families, their co-religionists or God? Would it help them adjust to their new lives, become more resilient and happier?

That was the question at the heart of a new study published recently in two prestigious psychology journals, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and the American Psychological Association’s Psychology of Religion and Spirituality Journal.  (One focuses on spiritual harm, the other on forgiveness.)

The study, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, looked at 293 formerly Haredi Jewish men and women who had left the demanding strictures of their Orthodox sects and were living lives outside of the community they had grown up in.

Of those, 278 respondents — or 95% — reported they had been harmed by their religious community. They felt discriminated against, rejected or threatened. All were U.S.-based, most living in New York and New Jersey. Half of the study participants reported that they identify as LGBTQ+, not too surprising given that gay love is considered a transgression in the Haredi world.

There are no good studies on the numbers of ex-Haredi Jews in the U.S. or whether their ranks are growing.

The study, based on a series of online questionnaires, suggested the practice of forgiveness correlated with lower levels of distress and spiritual struggle, along with greater levels of well-being and growth among those who left the religion of their upbringing.

While many other studies show forgiveness is associated with good mental health and greater life satisfaction, there weren’t any studies focused on forgiveness among those who have left religious communities, especially what the study calls “high-control, high-cost” religious groups, that make lots of demands on its members.

Yehudis Keller, the lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student in psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, comes from one of those religious communities. She left the Jewish Hasidic group Chabad and was able to recruit some of the participants in the study through her own network of acquaintances as well as from various groups set up to assist people leaving the Haredi world, such as Footsteps, and online support groups such as Off the Derech and a Reddit subgroup called ex-Jews.

“There were two elements of leaving ultra-Orthodoxy that I think stand out,” said Keller. “One is this idea of high cost or high demand, where there’s a lot you do to be part of the religion, and the other element is the high cost of leaving. The adjustment out of these communities tends to be really difficult in multiple ways.”

Unlike other high-demand religious groups, such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish or certain evangelical subgroups, Haredi Jews often encounter higher barriers to integrating in the outside world. That’s because many didn’t get a broad secular education. They may have spoken Yiddish at home and have only a rudimentary knowledge of English. Many Haredi communities don’t have TVs, and access to the internet is limited through filtering software on smartphones. Men and women are highly segregated, and discussions of sex are often nonexistent.

RELATED: Orthodox Judaism is making space for women’s religious leadership – even without traditional ordination

The nonrandom study, fielded at the end of 2023, found that 39% of respondents experienced or witnessed sexual, physical or emotional abuse; 27% said they received a poor education; 20% said they experienced a misuse of power by educators and leaders; 19% said abuse was covered up or justified.

Researchers (the study was co-authored by Julie J. Exline, Sarah Swartz and Maria Lindquist) then asked respondents whether they had applied a personal, internal process of forgiveness to deal with the harms they experienced. The study split forgiveness into four types: forgiveness toward people in their former religious community, the religious community as a whole, oneself and God.

With the exception of the forgiveness toward God, it found that forgiveness was positively correlated with resilience and satisfaction in life.

“Actively forgiving God didn’t really turn up anything too clear,” said Keller.

The strongest positive correlation came from self-forgiveness, she added.

“We found that forgiving oneself, which is somewhat interchangeable with the concept of self-compassion, wins out,” Keller said. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that it doesn’t matter if you forgive others if you don’t forgive yourself, but in a way, it’s more meaningful for your mental health if you can make sure that you’re OK with yourself for what happened.”

The study did not examine reconciliation. 

RELATED: Rejected elsewhere, these LGBTQ+ Jews find love and acceptance in the Connecticut woods

(RNS) — After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, some Black Jews noticed behavior from fellow Jews that made them feel like strangers in their own community. Whether receiving suspicious glances in a synagogue, having their “Shalom” greeting answered by a “thanks” or being asked what they considered intrusive questions on their views of the Israel-Hamas war, their fealty to the community seemed tested.

And outside Jewish spaces, exposure to antisemitism and remarks that conflated their Jewishness with support for Israeli government policies also felt alienating. 

“Most people are not exposed to what it means to be Jewish and experience anti-Blackness and antisemitism,” said Ilana Kaufman, CEO of the Jews of Color Initiative, a nonprofit concerned with creating multiracial, anti-racist Jewish communities.

Though Jews of color have long struggled to have their concerns heard more broadly, the past two years have been even more difficult, she added. 

Sensing a shift around these issues after Oct. 7, the Black Jewish Liberation Collective, a project of the left-leaning group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, began a survey. The report released this fall suggests that many Black Jews have felt increasingly marginalized in their Jewish communities yet tokenized outside of them.

Meanwhile, as much of the Jewish world focuses fundraising on Israel and Jewish safety amid rising antisemitic incidents, some funding for racial equity initiatives has dried up. Advocates worry these trends could unravel the past decade’s achievements in uplifting voices and experiences of Jews of color.

The survey, titled “Black Jews after 10/7,” circulated mostly in the United States from Oct. 1, 2024, to Jan. 31, 2025. Of 104 participants, it found that 62% reported feeling marginalized in their Jewish community after Oct. 7, and more than half (53%) felt marginalized in non-Jewish communities.

Moreover, 11% said they lost friends in Jewish spaces and 13% lost friends in non-Jewish spaces after Oct. 7. 

BJLC Executive Director Autumn Leonard said many participants indicated they believed their identity was being both flattened and scrutinized. The pressure to live up to the “real Jew” standard felt daunting, she explained.

“A big thing that started happening is a feeling of just being pushed to the margins, of being told things like ‘You can be Black, or you can be Jewish, but you can’t be both,’” said Leonard, who is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Michael W. Twitty is a culinary historian and the author of “Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew,” which won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award. But since Oct. 7, 2023, he said he hasn’t found much space to talk about his experiences with antisemitism as a Black Jewish man.

Twitty has grown a beard and worn a yarmulke, a Jewish skullcap, since his conversion to Judaism decades ago. Now, he sometimes considers removing them in fear of antisemitic attacks, he told RNS. 

“Those are the signifiers that I made a commitment to my people,” said Twitty, who is based in Fredericksburg, Virginia. “ … They’re the way I’m publicly Jewish to people.”

A longtime Hebrew school educator, Twitty also said he feels less welcome in synagogues, as few assume he is Jewish and may question his presence.

Issues regarding Israel have also put him in a tough spot. Since Oct. 7, mainstream Jewish institutions have often elevated Black Jews’ voices when they embrace pro-Israel views, he said. On the other hand, though he disapproves of the far-right Israeli government, Twitty said that outside of the Jewish community, his attachment to Israel has often been interpreted as support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

It became impossible for him to hold a nuanced position in this climate, he said. “I couldn’t go to anybody’s rally,” he said. “ … I don’t want to hear people say ‘Turn Gaza into a parking lot’ and I don’t want people shoving swastikas in my face talking about ‘Hitler should have finished the job.’”

About 1% of U.S. Jews identify as Black, according to 2020 Pew Research Center data, while 8% identify as Hispanic, Black or multiple race. However, the Jews of Color Initiative estimates Jews of color represent about 12% to 15% of American Jews, citing various population and local community studies, identifying ways population studies have historically undercounted Jews of color. And it found that younger American Jewish households are becoming increasingly multiracial. 

Participants’ views on Israel and Palestinian rights influenced whether they felt marginalized in Jewish spaces, the survey found, with progressive Black Jews feeling more alienated than those who are centrist. Survey takers tended to identify as left-wing in regard to the war — somewhat predictable, the organization pointed out, as a left-leaning group conducted the survey. A third said they felt more marginalized in Jewish communities that gave unquestioning support to Israeli government actions in Gaza.

But many respondents said their dual Black and Jewish identity was celebrated in progressive non-Jewish spaces when they unequivocally disapproved of Israel, Leonard said, but not necessarily otherwise.

About 19% reported feeling an increase in marginalization in non-Jewish spaces due to their own “pro-Israel beliefs or connections.” And about 15% said they felt marginalized in non-Jewish spaces “due to conflation of Jews with the Israeli government.” 

One anonymous participant wrote that after Oct. 7, “Jewish ritual spaces felt more exclusionary, like they were only for ‘real Jews’ to protect the dwindling sanctity of Judaism.” Another said being Black and Jewish made them a “convenient diversity point” in non-Jewish spaces. 

Post-Oct. 7, organizations for Jews of color saw a steep drop in funding, Leonard said, as mainstream Jewish institutions have realigned their priorities in the last couple years to increasingly fund Israel and Jewish safety. 

The funding trend, which started around 2020 and worsened post-Oct. 7, was confirmed by a brief survey sent by the Jews of Color Initiative to grantees, Kaufman said. The Trump administration’s denunciation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives over the last year has also deterred funders from investing in racial equity initiatives and led to some DEI professionals’ positions being cut. Jewish organizations that are critical of Israel have also had a harder time fundraising in the last couple years, she said. 

The current situation contrasts with the level of commitment displayed a decade ago, spurred by the police killings of Black men and boys such as Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and Trayvon Martin.

“I think the social winds have changed,” Kaufman said. “And I think that the organized Jewish community has not fully reckoned with itself being multiracial, multiethnic.”

Though Jewish safety was at the core of the community’s concern for shifting the funding tide, the focus on heavy policing around Jewish institutions also tends to exclude Black Jewish voices from discussions, Leonard said.

A sense of exclusion some Black Jews have felt within the queer community also captures complex dynamics among progressives, said Twitty, who is gay. Stuck between the progressive queer community, which tended to side with Palestinians, and the Jewish queer community, which often promoted LGBTQ rights in Israel, sometimes misleadingly, Twitty said he struggled to belong.

Nate Looney, the Jewish Federations of North America’s director of community safety and belonging, said many queer communities systematically looped American Jews in with the actions of the Israeli government after the war began. After Oct. 7, Looney, who is Black and trans, said he considered whether he would continue to attend Pride parades. At the 2024 San Francisco Pride Parade, his JFNA contingent had a liquor bottle thrown at them.

But while North American Jewish communities have focused much of their financial efforts on Israel and safety, discussions on racial equity are still happening, he said, adding that JFNA has doubled down on its efforts to create leadership pipelines for Jews of color.

“It doesn’t detract from the fact that we have to continue to foster belonging for all Jews — and including marginalized Jews in particular,” he said. “We haven’t backed down on the work that we’re doing to support marginalized Jews.”

Twitty said convening with other Jews of color has offered a little respite from the challenges of the past couple years. Last year, he attended a Sukkot service organized by Harriette Wimms, a queer Black Jewish activist who founded the Jews of Color Mishpacha Project.

“We actually did have a chance to break down our feelings and what was going on with us,” he said, adding that others in the Jewish community should also tune into such conversations. “They need to hear how we feel and what we’re going through.”