Gen Z drives surge in Catholic church attendance
After losing members during the clergy sex abuse scandal and COVID, is the Catholic church making a comeback? Parishes in the Pittsburgh area and across the nation are reporting a significant increase in new members, driven in part by Gen Z as people in their 20s search for deeper meaning in life.
St. Paul Cathedral saw overflow crowds on Easter this year — a weekend in which the Pittsburgh Diocese baptized 800 new Catholics, more than double from the year before. The trend delights the newly installed Bishop Mark Eckman.
"Very significant," Eckman said. "And that's not just in Pittsburgh. That's across the country. Every diocese is reporting a surge, more than double than what they've ever seen before."
While there are new members of all ages, the movement is being driven by college students and young people in their 20s who say they're looking for something more meaningful than the pursuit of money, power and prestige — what society calls success.
"They're getting everything that they want and realizing that's not what satisfies them, and so they're trying to look other places for it, and then they find the church," Ava Neugebauer of Hampton said.
Catholic student organizations at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University have grown in the past two years and now host an estimated 350 students in Bible studies. For the first time in a decade, a Catholic mass has returned to the Pitt campus as more than 200 students have found a spiritual home every Sunday in the soaring Gothic elegance of the Heinz Chapel.
Having grown up on the iPhone and social media and having suffered the isolation of the pandemic, students like Pitt Catholic Newman Club president Tommy Manning say they're looking for connection with each other and a higher power.
"A lot of young people have anxiety or depression," Manning said. "Most of us, and myself included, have just been graciously given the gift through God of the Catholic church."
"They're not being satisfied with what society has to offer or the message that they're receiving," Eckman said.
Bishop Eckman says this resurgence is not a political movement and the new Catholics are right-wing, left-wing and in the middle — driven by their heart rather than their political leanings. He says the young people he's been speaking with say they feel an emptiness in the modern culture and want greater fulfillment and a stronger foundation in faith.
"They don't trust social media," Eckman said. "They don't trust government. They don't trust their peers. They're looking for the truth, and they're finding that in the church. They're finding that in sacraments and certainly in the preaching of the Gospel. They want to know what's right and wrong, and they want to do that in their life."
