ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the response of the Catholic Church to the migration of Latinos to the city of Lowell, Massachusetts from the 1960s to the present. It seeks to answer the following question: Can the underrepresentation of Latinos in the halls of local government and the current underdevelopment of Latino political organization and leadership (witness the existence today of only two recently formed community organizations: the Latino Professional Network and Todos Unidos, a Spanish-language newspaper.) be explained by examining Church-Latino relations, including the Church's policy, leadership, and organizational response to the newcomers? Historically, the Catholic Church has been a vital institution for organizing Catholic immigrant interests in American city politics (Fitzpatrick 1990; Mitchell 1988; Dinnerstein, Nichols, and Reimers 1996; Fuchs 1990; Schinto 1995).
