Photo by Julianna Leopold

TYRONE—As a Hispanic woman married to a white husband, Meiling Familo understands what it takes to bring cultures together. She is bringing that awareness to St. Matthew Church gathering the diversity of languages and cultures.

“I think we need to work together to try to learn to communicate together and not see each other as different cultures,” said Familo, “but kind of have an umbrella that we can be under the Catholic culture.”

With the help of the Catholic Leadership Institute (CLI), the parish is leaning into a plan that sees differences as a gift, not a challenge to fix. Familo is leading the effort.

She recruited parish members intentionally, ensuring everyone sitting in the pews is represented at the table, with the ages, cultures and languages mirroring the church. New people are being invited to embrace roles to broaden their responsibilities.

There isn’t a desire to simply check a box to do busy work, she said, but to ensure a diverse group of people are rethinking beloved parish traditions

This work with the CLI was introduced into the Archdiocese of Atlanta in 2025. The parish is one of several communities exploring ways of revitalizing faith life. In a grassroots effort, each parish sets their priorities and with the help of facilitators, move toward fulfilling goals. The Rooted in Christ—Growing in Faith capital campaign includes funds to expand this effort so at least a quarter of the parishes in the archdiocese can participate.

Catholics first gathered at what became Tyrone’s St. Matthew Church in a funeral home 48 years ago. It was a mission of Most Blessed Sacrament Church until 1979, when it became a parish. Membership has grown by 50 percent over the past decade. There are an estimated 1,300 registered families, with strong growth among families with young children.

Today there are four weekend Masses celebrated by Father Valery Akoh. Believers worship in English and Spanish, while the parishioners reflect the global church, with natives from Africa, the Americas and Asia.

The pastor is a native of Cameroon, where 250 languages are spoken, he said. That’s why starting at the parish in 2022 felt like a good fit.

“With such diversity, I felt as coming home to St. Matthew,” said Father Akoh. “Diversity is my reality and I cherish it. Celebrating diversity for me means celebrating God’s ingenuity who creates each and all unique and varied,” he wrote in an email.

Meiling Familo, St. Matthew parishioner, is pictured while on pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Spain this summer. While there she learned that her pastor, Father Valery Akoh, wanted her to lead the parish’s unity effort. Photo Courtesy of Meiling Familo

The parish set unity as one priority in the CLI project. The parish members asked themselves how they could be more united and “not operate as two communities of Anglos and Hispanics? There was a divide,” Father Akoh wrote.

Other parish priorities include marriage enrichment, working with confirmation students to integrate them into parish life and increasing Mass attendance by inviting friends.

Modeling the pilgrimage experience

Familio, 60, joined the parish in 2008 before a military assignment took her family across the country in 2014. When her husband retired, they moved back to the area and returned to St. Matthew Church. An educator by training, she worked as coordinator for family faith formation for four years.

During the summer, she walked and prayed on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage path in Spain when she received an email from Father Akoh asking her to lead the unity effort. She said receiving the email during the pilgrimage as God’s perfect time because on that experience she saw how pilgrims from around the world with diverse languages could unite around the Catholic culture. It became a model for what she hopes to see at the parish.

A goal is to facilitate people of different backgrounds sitting together and learning from each other, instead of people isolating themselves into language and cultural groups. A goal is to overcome language shyness and communication gaps so everyone feels connected under the shared “umbrella” of Catholic identity, she said.

One new calendar item is organizing a parish multicultural music festival on the feast of Feast of St. Cecilia, the patron of church musicians. The five parish choirs, singing in both English and Spanish, will share a joint concert.

And the panel is reconsidering organizing the annual feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of the Americas, from a Hispanic-focused celebration to an inclusive event.

For Father Akoh, this priority reinforces the view expressed by Pope Leo, who has spoken about how unity is not uniformity. The pastor said, “the former integrates and makes use of our differences whereas the latter seeks to erase our differences.”