By Matthew Gambino • Posted April 16, 2025

In the information age, news has become a commodity like bushels of corn or barrels of oil. You don’t notice this kernel or that drop. Except when one nugget jumps out and you can’t help but notice.

For me that was a story I’d read last year about a surge in people becoming Catholic in France, especially young adults.

You might have heard that this traditionally Catholic country has seen its Catholic Mass attendance dwindle into the single digits, between 2 percent and 8 percent of Catholics going to church.

Folks might have assumed that’s the end of the Catholic presence in France. Would the last Catholic out please turn off the church lights?

Not so fast. A report last week shows that little kernel of faith sprouting among the young might represent a whole bushel after all.

This year the number of catechumens – those receiving the sacrament of baptism – will top 10,000 this Easter. The largest portion of this number is the 18-25 age group.

The figure is 45 percent higher than 2024, which was 32 percent higher than the previous year, which itself was 21 percent higher than the year before that.

The strong upward trend also applies to those receiving the other sacraments of initiation, including holy Communion and confirmation. The latter now must be conferred on multiple occasions because of the large numbers of those receiving the sacrament.

That’s good news for the Catholic Church in France, of course, and not only there.

The United States also is seeing an uptick in people entering fully into the Catholic Church. A report this week charted the rise in those receiving their sacraments of initiation this Easter across the country. Several weeks ago I noted in a CatholicPhilly column how the number of new Catholics is hitting a 10-year high in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Why this rise in religion among the young? The recent news stories feature observers offering some answers, such as a COVID bounce (people delayed completing their journey to the Catholic faith until now, five years later); a reaction against the lack of human connection experienced with the saturation of social media; a turn to traditional values in a rapidly changing and uncertain culture.

All are certainly factors. Another is the experience of young people in a culture no longer dominated by the Christian faith – a post-Christendom world.

In France, grandparents largely began walking away from the Church more than 50 years ago. Their children grew up in a culture that had mostly abandoned the Catholic faith, its teachings, and its sacraments. Young people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s might have had only a vague memory of Catholic culture, at best.

With no religious foundation, they were left on the bare ground of questions: Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? How can I make a difference in the world? Is there anything or anyone in whom I can believe, or trust? Am I loved?

To their credit, young people in our community, in our country, and abroad continue to seek answers to those fundamental questions of young adulthood.

Many people are now encountering the person of Jesus for the first time. He represents the answers to their questions, and his Church offers a way to live in a new way within a family of disciples like themselves. They have knocked, as the Gospel says (Mt. 7:7-8), and the door has been opened to them.

Young people are finding this experience of grace – the gift of faith in a personal encounter with Christ, lived in the community of the Church – that is confirmed in the Catholic sacramental system. Naturally they will want to share that gift with others in their homes and towns.

It’s the engine of missionary discipleship, to which Pope Francis has been calling the universal Church and Archbishop Pérez is calling the Church of Philadelphia.

Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus in the Easter season. We look to celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and thank God for his promise in every age and land, to light a fire of love and “renew the face of the Earth.” I pray it may always be so.