Why This Topic? Why Now?
By Katie Prejean McGrady
In March of 2018, I found myself standing in the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence, surrounded by three hundred young adults from around the world. We were saying the Our Father. On a stage set up mere feet away from a bench St. John Paul II would often sit on to pray his rosary, three men from Iraq and Israel joined together arm-in-arm, leading us in prayer.
It came after a long night of dancing, performance art, food and drinks, and a concert with Sr. Christina, the nun who famously won Italy’s version of The Voice, as the delegates to the Pre-Synod Meeting of Youth and Young Adults spent time together on our final night of the meeting, celebrating the hard work we had done.
I was with my new friends—Jonathan, a seminarian from Australia; Isaac, who worked for the Bishops’ Conference in England; Emily, from Salt and Light TV in Canada; Rosa, a graduate student in China; Joe, a climate change advocate from the Samoan Islands; and Samuel, a seminarian from Kenya.
I couldn’t help but tear up as we all prayed together, each in our own language as we listened to the three men praying in Arabic. The universal Church came to life before my very eyes.
Just a few days before, on the first day of the meeting, I’d sat in a room with eighteen other young adults from all around the world. In our first few hours together, we had three questions to answer, reviewing the state of faith for young adults around the world, and coming up with priorities we wanted the Vatican to address in the synod that coming October. The entire week we talked at length about what Catholicism looked like in our countries, how faith was (and wasn’t) shared, what worship and Mass felt and sounded like, the challenges we faced, and the things we hoped to see from the Pope.
One thing was very clear: far more united us than we had ever realized. Our languages were different, our cultural experiences unfamiliar, and our solutions to the problems were each unique because they were clearly a reflection of our experiences within our own countries. But we all professed faith in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church and our love of our Catholic faith bonded us.
Our experience of the Church is often very personal, particular, and localized, so its universality is sometimes difficult to grasp. I only really knew Catholicism in America before I went to Rome for the pre-synod meeting in 2018. I’d traveled across the United States, but had not seen or known much beyond the Church here. But the week I spent with Catholic young adults from around the world gave me a chance to zoom out and think about just how far-reaching the Church is, and helped me come to see that what is happening in the Church all around the world is part of what makes Catholicism so beautiful and good.
Ave Explores: Catholicism Around the World will help you take a broader view as well, incorporating Catholic voices from around the world and sharing what the faith looks like in other countries. The series will also:
- showcase saints from various countries;
- explore how the faith comes alive in Rome and what makes worship unique in India, Ireland, and the Samoan islands;
- consider the deep ideological divide among American Catholics;
- examine how the Church in South Africa was deeply changed by the racial injustices of apartheid; and
- highlight various ministries of the Congregation of Holy Cross throughout the world.
Learning more about the breadth and depth of Catholicism around the world can only help us grow deeper in our love of the Church and the understanding that it is our home, no matter where we happen to be.
Download this article as a PDF here.
Katie Prejean McGrady is a Catholic speaker and the host of Ave Explores podcast.
Based on Your Reading
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| The Saints are Good Company by Jen Norton | Befriending the Saints by Katie Prejean McGrady | Getting to Know Young Saints by Brian Rhude | The Role of Government in Laudato Si’ by William L. Patenaude |