‘Baggage free’ youth hunger for faith say college chaplains

College chaplaincies have seen “rapid growth” since Covid as young people are “hungry” for faith, college chaplains have said.

Growth of college chaplaincies has been “exponential” on campuses across the island of Ireland, with many seeing thousands of students coming through their doors each week, chaplains told The Irish Catholic.

While Census 2022 highlighted that under 25s are most likely to have no religion, young people have a “hunger for faith”, said Shannon Campbell, director of the Catholic Chaplaincy at Queen’s University Belfast.

The chaplaincy has seen engagement with students jump by almost 20% in 2023, as students come in having “never had faith or never encountered it”, Ms Campbell said.

“We rarely meet negative responses on campus,” she says, adding that the “response has been overwhelmingly positive”.

Young people don’t have the “baggage” of their parents regarding the Church and find it provides answers to “difficult situations” they see in the world, according to Fr Éamonn Burke.

“There’s something happening in this age group,” Fr Burke, one of two Catholic chaplains at University College Dublin, told The Irish Catholic.

“They don’t have the baggage of their parents… there’s an openness to spiritual direction in particular and learning how to pray,” he said.

He compared the chaplaincy’s work to the early Christian Church, saying Catholic students bear witness by the “great care” they show for each other.

“Working with students, giving them the grounding in the Bible and befriending them. That’s a key thing is befriending them. The early Christian Church began that way,” he said.

For Fr Ger Dunne OP, chaplain to University College Cork, time and effort is needed to tap into the hunger for faith and spirituality among young people.

“It’s a lot of time and effort in getting people interested and having appropriate content for people who want to know more about faith, spirituality, and the other arm of it as well are bits of health and wellbeing. That takes time, that doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.