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Gomez was born in Monterrey, Mexico and studied theology at the University of Navarra in Spain. He was ordained an Opus priest in 1978 and worked in the Houston-Galveston area and in Denver before being named archbishop of San Antonio in 2004. At a future concistory, the pope will likely name Gomez a cardinal, given that Los Angeles is such a large and important archdiocese whose leader has traditionally worn a red hat. Hispanics are the fastest-growing group in the American Catholic church. Latinos comprised 32 percent of all U.S. Catholics in 2008 compared to 20 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. There are currently 65 million Catholics in the U.S. Benedict acknowledged the importance of the growing Hispanic Catholic community when he named Archbishop Daniel N. DiNardo of the heavily Latino Galveston-Houston archdiocese a prince of the church in 2007. "This just recognizes the reality on the ground that the center of gravity of U.S. Catholicism is moving to the South and West and is becoming increasingly Hispanic," said David Gibson, a Catholic author who covers religion for PoliticsDaily.com.
[Associated
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