SALT LAKE CITY (OSV News) ─ Despite a 21st century world that is increasingly becoming more secular, participants at the Fellowship of Catholic University Students' Jan. 1-5 SEEK25 conference in Salt Lake City overwhelmingly expressed hope for the future of the Catholic Church.
Approximately 17,000 people joined FOCUS' main SEEK conference in Salt Lake City, while approximately 3,000 attendees joined the first ever satellite SEEK location in Washington Jan. 2-5.
Deacon David Jaramillo, a seminarian at St. Francis de Sales Seminary in Wisconsin, will be ordained a priest for the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, in five months. He said this is his eighth SEEK conference.
Sharing the Gospel in a part of the world where the numbers of the faithful have been declining is challenging, he said. But Deacon Jaramillo said he remains hopeful, citing the presence of many young people at the conference as a sign of future promise.
"Seeing all these many young people here makes my heart hope," he said. "Now, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. There's many people that need to meet the Lord. In a space like this, we're all fired up encountering the Lord Jesus. Then we go back home, and nobody knows God. So it's up to us to share him through the church that Jesus instituted, through the sacraments and through the Gospel."
Christopher George, a student at Wichita State University, where he is active in his faith and serves as an extraordinary minister of holy Communion, said he was at SEEK for the first time. On campus he sees a lot of good people who seem to have not yet found their way, he said. Still, he is optimistic about the future of the church.
"I think it's going to be fine," he said. "It's survived for so long I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. It might suffer -- it might get smaller -- but I don't think it's going to go away."
Sister Marie Bernadette Gareis, a Dominican who at 33 is not much older than many conference participants, was also attending her first SEEK conference. She found the experience uplifting and energizing, she said.
Sister Marie Bernadette has never really believed the notion that the church and faith in general are dying, she added.
"It's really nice to be here and actually see like that's definitely not the case for what I see," she said. "It seems like the church is very much alive, and the Holy Spirit is always going to be there, keeping the church alive. Jesus said, 'I am with you to the end of time,' so I don't think it's going anywhere. And it's really encouraging to see the growth that's happening."
Rigo Tellez, a Weber State University student from Logan, Utah, is actively involved in his parish and was invited by his pastor to attend the SEEK conference.
"The number one thing that's going to stay with me was to basically just let people know our church, it's much bigger than we could imagine," Tellez said. "A lot of us fall into this trap: It's just like the small little thing we do on Sundays, and that's just all we do -- but there's just so much more richness to it."
Along with the students, many older adults attended SEEK25 to support them or to share the experience.
Philip Wier, a former seminarian, and his wife Sarah Wier, who served as a FOCUS missionary, are parishioners at Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Mountain Home, Idaho. Their faith in the future of the church is so strong that they brought their three children Denny, 3; Lucy, 2; and Caleb, 4 months, with them to SEEK25 to expose them to the community of the church, Philip Wier said.
"It's for them to see the life of the church," he said. "The church is really just a family, and so (it's) for them to just be exposed to this as a fun, joyful event. It's also a great opportunity for us to witness to the college students of the joy and beauty of having a family, especially multiple little children. The culture today is very against that, and so it's really good to be able to just share God's gifts."
Brooke and Tom DiIulio, parishioners at St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Davenport, Iowa, came with a group of Assumption High School students. They were encouraged by the faith they found among conference participants, Brooke DiIulio said.
"Being here gives me hope. There's definitely a secular element drawing people away from the faith, but it's only going to change one by one. And I think that's the power of FOCUS and the power of SEEK," she said. "Spreading the Gospel is just trying to reach one person at a time."
Sisters Joann Heinritz and Eileen McCann, both Sisters of St. Joseph, saw a great response from conference participants at their booth promoting their order at SEEK25's Mission Way vendor hall. The church needs to make some changes to more effectively draw young people to the faith, they said.
"Our young people are looking for community. They're looking for meaning in life, and our church can offer that, but we have to make some shifts," Sister Eileen said. "We've got to go where they are. They're not coming to us, so we've got to go where they are and show the Spirit to them and show that the Spirit is within them and pull that forth."
Sister Eileen said that also means the church needs to shift thinking of itself more as "people of Jesus, of the Gospel, and not an institution so much." She added, "So for me to see these young people experience with such energy and enthusiasm -- they're all on fire. And that's what Jesus told us: That we should be on fire."
Father Steve Mateja, a priest of the Detroit Archdiocese, brought a group of about 40 Oakland University students and campus ministry staff to the conference. The church is thriving and growing on his FOCUS expansion campus, he said.
"To say that the church is old and decaying and decrepit is a fallacy," he said. "The church is alive, and what we have done is the faith of our fathers has been passed on to this young generation. And they're receiving it and carrying the baton."
Young people today "don't want all of the Hokey Pokey. They want authenticity, truth, goodness and beauty," the priest said. "Walking with young people, that's the constant theme in their hearts."
Next year's SEEK conference will take place in three locations across the U.S., according to FOCUS. With the theme "To the heights!" SEEK26 is scheduled to take place in Denver; Columbus, Ohio; and Fort Worth, Texas, Jan 1-5, 2026.
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Linda Petersen writes for OSV News from Salt Lake City. She is a staff writer at Intermountain Catholic, the newspaper for the Diocese of Salt Lake City.
