Laporta, Hector N.

The Rev. Dr. Hector N. Laporta, a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church. He was commissioned in May 2016.

His new placement is as professor of theological sciences at the Latin American Biblical University, San Jose, Costa Rica. The Universidad Biblica Latinoamericana (UBL) is the center for theological formation for most Methodist churches in Central America and the ecumenical community. It is also an important center for gender studies for the entire region of Latin American and Caribbean.

As professor of theological sciences, Hector will boost the UBL’s capacity to provide such training and respond to a challenging context where the oldest and most-respected ecumenical seminaries in the region face difficulties in staying active. Key updates to this position in 2023 include supervising student research projects, attending meetings of the School of Theological Sciences and the Academic Council, participating in the General Assembly of the governing body of UBL, serving on academic or other committees, and assuming administrative tasks as agreed upon by both parties. Online teaching skills are now increasingly desirable.

Hector is a citizen of Peru, born in Uruguay, where his father was a pastor for a time. He is an ordained elder of the Methodist Church of Peru, but served pastorates in the New York Annual Conference for 15 years before entering missionary service. He holds a master’s degree in anthropology from the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Ecuador, an intergovernmental organization for Latin America and the Caribbean dedicated to researching, teaching and spreading the social sciences. He earned a Ph.D. degree in 2013 from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

His New York Conference pastoral appointments included Bethelship Norwegian and Fourth Avenue United Methodist churches, both in Brooklyn, and the Church in the Village (United Methodist) in Manhattan. Earlier, he spent 15 years in ministry in Peru. He also participated in ministry while in school in Ecuador. Much of his work has been with the poor and marginalized.

Hector sees his role at the seminary in Costa Roca partly as that of sharing his experience “with young generations as a manner to return the opportunities I had to serve God and the poor,” he said.

Hector is married to Milagros Ricourt.