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Like bells ringing and echoing through the streets, the same echo can be heard from city to city across Europe: the number of baptisms set to be celebrated on Easter night in 2025 is expected to reach record levels. This is unprecedented in the spiritual desert of our old continent, which for so many years seemed to have succumbed to consumerist materialism and the abandonment of hope.
France, which once adorned itself with the glorious title of eldest daughter of the Church, is leading the movement. According to the Catholic weekly Famille Chrétienne, more than 10,300 adults and 7,400 teenagers will be baptised on Easter night, representing a 45% increase compared to 2024: a figure that confirms the trend observed over the last five years. In 2023, there were 5,463 adult baptisms: in two years, the figure has almost doubled, according to official statistics from the Conference of Bishops of France.
The enthusiasm generated by these figures must be tempered by an important fact: 52% of catechumens grew up in a Christian family without being baptised as children. This means that the significant number of adult baptisms is largely a sign of the failure to pass on the faith: in a way, these are delayed baptisms of children who were not baptised at the time by parents who preferred to let their offspring ‘make their own choice,’ thus depriving them of the treasures of a Christian upbringing. It is fortunate that these future-baptised have managed to get back on track. But how many more have been left by the wayside, in the name of indifference—sometimes encouraged by certain prelates themselves who are reluctant to talk about mission and conversion for fear of being accused of proselytism?
But let us not deny ourselves our pleasure. Times are changing, and for the better, and it would be a sin to welcome this news with lukewarmness or even with the irrepressible bitterness that lies dormant in every conservative who believes in decline.
In England, five hundred years after the schism, the Catholic revival has become a reality. Several dioceses are recording record numbers of baptisms this year: in the diocese of Westminster, the increase in baptisms is 25%, and it peaks at 100% in Cardiff. The Daily Telegraph looked at the profile of the catechumens: they are often young men who are turning to the Catholic Church in search of, in their own words, “coherence” and “consistency.”
Fr. Daniel, from the Oratory Convent in York, analyses the phenomenon as follows: “There is a sense of moral chaos and lack of meaning in today’s society. If people can find something that makes sense, provides meaning, and also gives a community, which the Catholic Church does, they are going to be attracted to this, and I think this is particularly true for young men.” Among the reasons given for this return to faith is an appetite for its sense of the sacred and its beauty.
In other countries, the stirrings, albeit more modest, are clearly there. In Austria, a country with an old Catholic tradition in the midst of a crisis in its relationship with faith, the head of the catechumenate within the Bishops’ Conference also observes a trend towards renewal, particularly among young people. In Vienna, a third of those baptised in 2025 will be under the age of 20. They come from families that have severed ties with the faith. Deep down they recognise that they have always felt they were believers, against all odds.
This return to faith is obviously a kind of miracle, given that everything else is being done to destroy, defile, and sully everything that the Christian faith represents and its vision of man oriented towards a salvation that is not of this world. Even whispered in a weak and hesitant voice by his disciples who today doubt and struggle, even tremble and hide, Christ’s message is powerful enough to still be heard.Behind the path of those who are rediscovering or discovering faith and will receive baptism on Easter night lies a truth that is disturbing to the apostles of progressivism: the substitute affiliations they seek to impose on us by constantly inventing new causes, from wokeness to climate activism, cannot replace the true bonds we have inherited—those of faith, identity, and family—and do not bring happiness. Even as everything seems to point to the triumph of a modern society dominated by the cult of ugliness, the deliberate inversion of norms, and the absence of meaning, a whole section of young people feel an irresistible rebellion rising within them against what is being offered to them, which brings only fleeting excitement and is incapable of quenching their thirst for happiness. They are timidly discovering that there is an alternative: to follow the One who, two thousand years ago, told us that He is the way, the truth, and the life. Laetare, Jerusalem! Let us rejoice!