Princeton, NJ – While other students can be in class or socialize at lunch, a group of young Catholics attends Mass every day at noon in the Chapel of Princeton University.
Gregorian songs sing in Latin, pray and receive communion in a side chapel, within the huge printon printon chapel, that young and dedicated Catholics see as a sacred refuge in an environment of the ivy league mostly liberal and secular.
“I feel that people’s faith is very strong here,” said student Logan Nelson about the dedicated Catholic space where he attends the daily mass. “It feels like a home, even more than my own home.”
The Chapel of the Gothic University was built in 1928. At that time, says Princeton, his ability to sit at more than 2,000 people was second only for King’s College Chapel at the University of Cambridge.
Today, the chapel houses interreligious services, concerts and weddings throughout the academic year and the university is known by the university as “the bridge between the city and the dress.”
On May 8, Catholic students worshiped as usual at the daily mass in the side chapel when the service was interrupted by news alerts about their phones. In the Vatican, the white smoke scored from the Sistine Chapel, indicating that a new leader of his faith had been chosen.
Reverend Zachary Swank, Princeton Catholic chaplain, told the group to meet at the Catholic Ministry’s office. Together, they saw on television how the choice of the first Pope born in the United States was announced.
“It was electric,” Nelson said, added that there was “fuss” in the room when the cardinal born in Chicago Robert Prevost It became the Pontiff 267. “It was great to see an American Pope.”
Like other members of the Catholic Ministry, he hopes that Pope Leo XIV helps bring a revival for Catholicism in the United States.
“I feel that today there is a resurgence of Catholicism,” said Nelson, who was not religiously affiliated until last year when he became Catholicism. “You see people passionate about their faith. A new wave is approaching and we will have more converts like me, who come from the ‘Nones’.”
In much of the world, the number of people who are not believers or are not affiliated with any organized religion has increased dramatically over the years. People known as “Nones” – Atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular – comprise 30% or more of the adult population in the United States, according to A survey by the Public Affairs Research Research Center of Associated Press-NORC.
Princeton’s religious life office says he supports members of the school community “of any religious identity or none.”
Being a devout Catholic on a mostly secular campus can be a challenge; Swantek says he has ever felt “more necessary as a priest.”
He is proud of the very close and cozy Catholic community that leads and how they have helped recent converts to reach faith.
The news of the first Pope born in the United States was Welcome to Catholics through the ideological spectrum inPapa Leo XIVThe homeland.
“Something that brought me a lot of hope is that Pope Leo has a missionary history,” said Ace Acuna, a former Princeton student. Recently he attended a mass in the chapel before starting a Catholic pilgrimage of almost five weeks from Indianapolis to Los Angeles.
“In a world where in some places it looks like faith is in Declive, a church that is willing to go out to the margins and evangelize and be on a mission, that will be very important,” said Acuna.
When he was a university student at Princeton, Acuna said the chapel became crucial for his university life.
On his way to the class every morning, he passed through the chapel for a silent prayer. I would return for the Mass at noon and again at the end of the day for a last prayer.
“Princeton is a very busy place and there is a lot of noise externally and internally because we are very busy and we are always worried about the following,” he said. “Sometimes you just want silence, and you just want a place where you can place your loads.”
At the end of a recent mass, David Kim and his girlfriend Savannah Nichols continued to pray near the altar, holding themselves, kneeling or prostrating on the floor in a sign of reverence.
Kim, a recent graduate from the Princeton Theological Seminar, became Catholicism last year and has been serving as a altar server in the Chapel of Princeton University. He called the altar on the side of the “An island of the Christian life in an incredulous world.”
Princeton University has always had a vibrant religious community and a diverse religious, said Eric Gregory, a professor of religion there.
“In a way, it is so secular or even postsecular that it is not threatened by the Christian presence on the campus,” he said. “Religious students on our campus are not enclaustrated on campus. They are also in sports teams, clubs and the newspaper. They are integrated.”
The Catholics of the University of Illinois in Urbano-Champaign were euphoric for their choice, and revitalized by practicing their faith.
“Being able to live my faith in this extremely secular campus is a blessing to me,” said student Daniel Vanisko, a life of a lifetime, and then added in an email that the Pope’s elections “really helps me to approach my faith, seeing that someone who grew up in the same state as me, is the successor of Peter in the Church.”
Cavan Morber, a rising young man, said that attending Uiuc “gives me the opportunity to be challenged in my beliefs, think critically about what I believe and share my faith with others.”
When asked in an email exchange about the Pope’s elections, Morber replied: “What time to be alive!”
“I have the hope of how to unite the Church at a time of a great division between Catholics and everyone,” Morber added.
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