CONWAY — Area Hispanic Catholics took part in a special ceremony Aug. 15 at the Church of St. James. They celebrated a newly formed Hispanic-English Knights of Columbus roundtable.
Grand Knight Dan Smith of Council 7531 said he was happy to welcome his Hispanic brothers into the Knights. “They will be the nucleus of that roundtable as we start,” he said.
Smith said the roundtable members will meet independently. “Their information will be communicated to me through a translator, and we will have one common goal.”
Victor Rivera, a fourth-degree Knight, is the chairman of the roundtable.
There are about 100 members of the council now, according to Smith.
“We have a total of five [Hispanic members] who were brought in today, and there are six more on the way,” he said. “We are very, very elated about it. We expect [the council] to grow and grow rapidly.”
The church’s outreach parish at the Church of the Resurrection in Loris also has a rapidly expanding Hispanic membership.
“We are becoming more involved. What we’d like to do is to bring the Spanish-speaking community together with the English-speaking community and have one big happy family,” Smith said.