Mercedes Olivera / Dallas Morning News

The last thing many people want to talk about when they've just lost a child is donating their child's organs to someone else. Someone who is still walking and breathing when their child isn't.

So it was that Father Eduardo González found himself searching for – and finding – the right words to console a family dealing with the death of a teenage son a couple of years ago.

"The father was having an especially difficult time, and I told him it was not the end of the story of his son's life," Father González said. "We have the example of God who 'donated' his own son. We get closer to life when we enter the culture of donation."

Then he explained to the family what organ donation can do and that giving someone else a life again can also keep the memory of a loved one alive.

The priest, who has counseled many other families since then at St. Edward's Catholic Church in Dallas, is part of a growing number of church officials who have been enlisted by a Dallas transplant organization over the last several years to support organ donation.

"Faith leaders like Father González make a huge difference when they get the facts and share them with congregants," said Pam Silvestri , spokeswoman for the Southwest Transplant Alliance.

"These are people who lead sermons every week and are intimately in the lives of their congregations, so when tragedy strikes, if faith leaders have factual information, everyone benefits."

Getting church leaders to help recruit donors was part of a program initiated by the Southwest Transplant Alliance several years ago to increase organ donations among minorities.

The organization spent the last two years educating church leaders and getting them, in turn, to educate their congregations. Now the alliance is surveying the congregations and has found that if a church supports organ donation, the members do, too.

Latinos, especially, have such loyalty to their church leaders that it often takes just a few words of advice from the parish priest to change attitudes.

Before the alliance program began, Latinos tended to have lower rates of organ donation. Using a combination of church leaders and teams of Spanish-speakers to approach family members has probably helped increase consent among Latino families, Ms. Silvestri said.

Last year, there were 608 donors in Texas, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network. Of these, 177 were Hispanic, 80 African-American, and 334 white.

But the need among Latinos is growing.

Of last year's donors, 30 percent were Latinos. But Latinos represent more than 47 percent of those needing kidneys.

The incidence of diabetes is especially high among Latinos, and it's reflected among those needing kidneys in the state.

Of the 4,238 people awaiting kidneys in Texas, 1,975 are Hispanic, compared with 1,056 blacks and 1,072 whites.

Those are good figures to remember Aug. 1, which is National Minority Organ Donor Awareness Day. It's a day to honor those, living or dead, who have donated organs.

It's also a good time to think about organ donation – when you don't have to.

Father González has thought about it many times over the last couple of years.

He has told families about the benefits of offering the gift of life.

"To be able to leave an imprint inside another human being is a beautiful thing," the priest said. "Helping another in this way helps make us more like God."