Pastoral Care and Counseling with Latino/as
Overview
The Latino population is a pastorally challenging polyculture. This diversity requires spiritual caregivers to approach every Hispanic individual with humbleness. "Cada persona es un mundo," "every person is a world," says Montilla.
To equip professionals in ministry for their ministry with and for Latino/as, Montilla centers his presentation on families and rituals at the heart and soul of the Hispanic community as the key to caregiving. In that context he unfolds a variegated picture of the particular cultural guideposts for Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. today, especially their symbols and rituals, attitudes toward health and healing, abiding faith, and contemporary quest for creative agency and dignity. He closes by exploring pastoral strategies with issues of discrimination and racism, and contemporary issues in providing pastoral counseling with Latinas and Latinos.
I applaud the groundbreaking work by Esteban Montilla and Ferney Medina, especially for its effort to bring the Latino world into dialogue with the mostly Anglo clinical pastoral tradition. This is a serious and helpful work that deserves our attention.
—Raymond Lawrence, Ph.D., General Secretary, College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy; Director of Pastoral Services, New York Presbyterian Hospital / Columbia University Health Center
A comprehensive guidebook. . . Montilla and Medina discuss appropriate clinical helping skills and cultural competence by recognizing the importance of spirituality in Latinos' lives and how the family structure and daily life are influenced by this connection to a high power. They have created an informative and pragmatic text on an under-recognized paradigm for helping and healing—the integration of spirituality into the counseling relationship.
—Patricia Arredondo, Ed. D., President, American Counseling Association, Past-President, National Latina/Latino Psychological Association
- Title: Pastoral Care and Counseling with Latino/as
- Author: R. Esteban Montilla
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Publication Date: 2006
- Pages: 160
R. Esteban Montilla is Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor at Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas.