Anne Attea’s two and a half years of volunteer service in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, occurred from 1988 to 1990, a time of upheaval in that country.
“The first year and a half, the country was under a military dictatorship, and the second was its transition to democracy,” said Attea, 59. “I served in one of the four neighborhood chapels connected with the parish of San Roque, working with youth, faith formation, pastoral ministry and accompaniment.”
“I have many life-impacting memories from that time and friendships that are now 35 years old,” Attea said. “Most significantly, I fell in love with a people, culture and language that would shape who I have become and set my life’s trajectory through the present.”
Raised in the Chicago suburb of Glenview — and the proud granddaughter of Lebanese, Egyptian, German and Polish immigrants — Attea headed to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana in the fall of 1982 as a pre-med major, switching to theology her junior year.
“Being of service to others was definitely part of my vocation, but not quite the way I had envisioned it,” she said. “Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns had just opened its doors, and I participated in several ‘urban plunges’ and a summer immersion project with children in St. Louis. After graduation, I worked with youth through YMCA Camp Menogyn in Grand Marais before applying for the Holy Cross Associates program in Chile.”
After her time in Chile, Attea struggled as she returned to the United States.
“My life’s values of simplicity, service, social justice, spirituality, community and solidarity were countercultural, and I wondered if I would ever find my footing again in the U.S.,” she said.
In what she calls “a depressive haze,” Attea entered the Master’s in Divinity program at Loyola University in Chicago, an opportunity to pursue her studies through the lens of Hispanic ministry, allowing her to find some grounding and ease the pain of transition.
Having completed the program, Attea headed to Guerrero, Mexico, with the Archdiocese of Chicago to be part of a parish comprised of 29 villages, “a life-giving experience of rural pastoral ministry, liturgical minister formation and youth ministry to complement the urban experience I had had in Chile,” she said.
After two years in Mexico, Attea came to Minnesota, where she served as the director of Latino Ministry for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis from 1998 to 2008.
“That was a rich decade of growing Hispanic/Latino ministry here in the archdiocese and working with some amazing collaborators to better attend (to) the needs of our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters, most of whom live a very different reality from the dominant culture here in the Twin Cities,” she said.
In 2007, following the adoption of her daughter, Bela, Attea decided she needed to localize her ministerial life. That brought her to Ascension in north Minneapolis, where she started with Latino ministry and is now director of faith formation and social justice for the parish.
“It has been exciting to be part of a team that has created a vibrant intercultural community and school that prays, plays and serves as one body,” she said.
“Similarly, through my 25 years here in the archdiocese, I have had the great gift of seeing many of our Latino volunteers develop into competent and gifted leaders and staff in their parish communities.”
In her experiences abroad and in the Twin Cities, Attea said, she has felt Christ’s presence and grown the most “when I have taken the risk to go outside my comfort zone and accompany those on the margin of our Church and society. It is not easy, but it is rewarding.”
“The place and circumstances of one’s birth are God-given,” she said. “To those whom much has been given, much is expected. I take that charge very seriously.”
“In reality, where you are is the mission field,” Attea said. “As Catholics, in all that we are, say and do, we’re called to be missionary disciples.”
