When Pope Francis celebrates a canonization Mass for a Spanish-American missionary in Washington this month, he will do so in a language that the new saint, Junípero Serra, would recognize: Spanish.

There's a number of reasons for that, said Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington who will be hosting the pope on the Washington leg of his three-city U.S. visit later this month.

First, Spanish is the pope's mother tongue; he was born in Argentina.

"But it’s also a recognition of how large the Hispanic population in the United States is," Wuerl said. "And also because he is canonizing a Spanish speaker. And he's coming as the first pope from the New World, and the language, the predominant language of the Western Hemisphere, is Spanish."

Hispanics make up one-third of the U.S. Catholic church. "They're the biggest source of population growth in the church," said Julia Young, a professor at the Catholic University of America, a pontifically chartered university in Washington, who has written about the history of Hispanic Catholics in America.

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