Where Have All the Young People Gone?

You can view ZOOM Recording of this event above

“Are young people today the prophets in the Church, telling us, by their absence, what we don’t want to hear? Is religion one big yawn for young people, as long as Church involvement concerns itself primarily with Church involvement?”

So asks Peter McVerry SJ, Ireland’s most outspoken campaigner for Ireland’s homeless and for its most disadvantaged young people.

Convinced that the ongoing crisis of confidence in the Irish Catholic Church cannot be resolved unless we set out to encounter God in those most in need, Peter believes that all of us need to be ‘evangelised by the poor’. Only then can the church not only engage the interest of the missing younger generations but rejuvenate their often despondent elders.

Having told the Irish Bishops Conference in 2019 of our belief that young people will not find meaning in the Mass unless they can see how it relates to issues of social justice in Ireland, the ACI Steering Group applauds Peter McVerry’s inspirational witness over half-a-century, and welcomes him to our Zoom series on the problems of faith formation and the missing generations.