The Active and Critical Participation: A Study on Belonging and Believing Among Young Catholics in Rome

Abstract

This article deals with the relationship between young Catholics, their faith, and the Church. Several studies show a progressive distancing of the new generations from traditional religions, especially in European societies. This research focuses on young Catholics and observes their way of believing and belonging. Data collection was conducted in the religious and cultural context of the Diocese of Rome through semi-structured interviews with young key informants chosen for their educational engagement with their faith community. The results, analyzed through a reflective and positional approach conducted with N-vivo, highlight the emerging sensitivities of young people interested in the experience of faith and involvement in their community, despite a critical and not submissive sense of belonging towards the ecclesial institution and the proposed educational pathways for young people who are adapting to this new condition.

1. Introduction

Different and coexisting processes characterize and transform the presence of religions in the European context: the slow and progressive distancing from traditional religious institutions and Catholicism in particular (Hervieu-Léger 2003), and religious pluralism that leads to the encounters of different faith communities (Canta 2020; Berger 1992). Furthermore, post-secularization (Habermas 2018) has transformed the role and presence of religious values in Western democratic societies and the individualization of faith experiences (Hervieu-Léger 1999). Inside such a complex scenario, ways of conceiving religion require strategies that defend, reject, or attempt to reconcile potentially opposing truths (Berger 2014).

In recent times, scandals related to sexual abuse (Servaas and Vandewiele 2024), claims about gender inequality (Zwissler 2012; Casavecchia et al. 2023), or the diffusion of alternative forms of Christianity such as Pentecostal churches (Py and Pedlowski 2020) highlight the perception of the distance between ecclesiastical institutions and people. At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church has launched attempts at rapprochement through two processes: the promotion of a culture of protection of inclusion and the environment (Roccia 2024) and, above all, a synodal process of renewal (Vranješ 2024; Sala 2020).

In this contest, the new generations face a different reality than their parents: religious socialization (Sherkat 2003), such as that among Catholics, struggles to be transmitted in a traditional way. Some studies (Putnam and Campbell 2012) suggest that people change their affiliation more willingly than in the past, so young people feel freer than their parents to abandon one religion or choose another. Furthermore, the new generations find themselves more spiritual tinkerers (Wuthnow 2011) because they build their spirituality according to their values and the context in which they live (Bichi and Bignardi 2015). This raises questions about emerging faith identities, religious engagement in young people’s lives, and the role of religion in education and community relations (Collins-Mayo 2012).

Through research data1, this article aims to delve deeper into the current relationship between young people and the Catholic Church by observing three dimensions: their specific characteristics, the relationships with their community of belonging, and how the proposals of education on faith are structured. The findings of a survey conducted with semi-structured interviews addressed to young key informants chosen for their educational commitment in the Church of Rome towards other peers and teenagers are presented. Specifically, the interviewees, as described in the methodological paragraph, were selected with the support of the Youth Pastoral Service and with an analysis of the urban space of the diocese of Rome. It will highlight the emerging sensitivities, critical issues, and experiences that lead young people to develop an engaging, open, but not indissoluble or unquestionable sense of belonging.

2. How the Faith and Belonging of Young Catholics Are Changing

In Western European and Mediterranean societies, participation in religious rituals has decreased, and spiritual communities have become smaller than in the past (Davie 2023). Even in Italy, the religious–cultural landscape has lost its ability to influence people’s lives and social representation (Garelli 2020; Cipriani 2020). In some countries religion can still be found in the social space, taking the form of civil religion (Bellah 1967) or influencing the public sphere, although there is a decline in social significance of religious beliefs and practices for people (Casanova 1994). Belief (or non-belief) is a personal choice and faith experiences are now diversified and individualized (Berger 1970; Aldrige 2013). Contradictory phenomena are taking shape: some people are inspired by a generic God without declaring a specific religious affiliation (Davie 2021); others declare their religious affiliation while setting up their private lives without corresponding to the values professed by their faith. Widespread de-sacralization, however, has not stifled the impulse to transcendence, which seems to have been channeled in other ways (Hervieu-Léger 1999; Crespi 1997). If, on the one hand, people are less bound by the constraints of institutionalized religions, on the other, spirituality becomes a central ingredient of life, as it can hold together person, experience, community and transcendence.

However, although the spread of religiosity has contracted, for young believers, religion in its dimensions (spirituality, practices, and belonging) remains a point of reference (Jung and Park 2020). Young people choose a more exploratory approach (McNamara Barry et al. 2010). Their personal experiences, situated in a specific context, are the starting point for questioning issues of faith, while the classical agencies of religious socialization, such as the family or the institution, lose strength (Cusack 2011). In this subjective turn, adherence to values, recognition of dogmas and attendance at rituals become less central (Collins-Mayo 2012). Instead, experience within one’s parish community becomes central.

A study on participation in religion among young Catholics in Italy (Genova 2022) points out that the distance between believing and behaving takes two opposite directions. The first highlights an individual approach: they pray often, but not all attend rituals; they declare themselves trusting in the faith community, but are distant from ecclesiastical institutions. The second highlights a spiritual/intimate vision of the young Catholic more involved in the ecclesial communities: for many of them, religion is not essential for their lifestyle, and many others feel distant from Catholic structures. At the same time, other studies underline the growth of the spiritual dimension in Italy (Palmisano 2010). In fact, spirituality2 loses ties with communitarian reference and offers greater independence from religious organizations. It bridges the gap with secularism, since it emphasizes concrete feelings rather than doctrines and dogmas; furthermore, it can be compatible with religiosity since intra-religious or extra-religious spiritualities share the same attitude of seeking a way for personal meaning of life. As a result, for young people, “religion, spirituality, and secularism are not always reciprocally exclusive fields, either analytically or empirically, but subject to the porous border in the construction of beliefs and individual practices” (Palmisano and Pannofino 2017, p. 143).

A spirituality detached from religious belonging tends to take an extremely individualized form. The centrality of personal experience is the field of understanding the truth and the criteria to address the search for self-realization. In Italy, too, a kind of religion of the heart (Watts 2022) seems to be taking shape. Feelings and sensations are the basis for verifying individual authenticity and ensuring personal freedom in the balance of mind, spirit, and body. From an Ego-centric perspective, personal well-being is the narrative key for discerning the events of one’s life—especially on occasions of pain—and recognizing an optimistic and reassuring view of life. The religion of the heart allows a self-made ethic that can be constructed and identified as an immanent God or a transcendent force that can be found outside or inside each one.

What seems to characterize the young Italian Catholic is the individualization of experience, the questions of meaning, and the critical belonging to religious institutions. If the contents of youth religiosity change, it is necessary, on the one hand, to change even the dimensions considered to measure their participation, and on the other hand, to observe what new proposals for religious socialization have offered and experienced.

To achieve these purposes, it seems possible to draw on Nancy Ammerman’s approach to reading religious practice in a different key. For the scholar, religiosity is not measured exclusively in the realm of the sacred, but it is important to consider people’s lives and how the spiritual dimension enters everyday practice (Ammerman 2014). The scholar proposes an approach based on people’s lives as they realize, narrate, and express their beliefs, spirituality, and experiences. In this sense, the spiritual dimension, understood as a break with ordinary consciousness that leads to an awareness of something more, is added to the structural features of social practices such as embodiment, materiality, emotion, esthetics, morality, judgment, and narrative. In this theoretical framework, practices are open-ended, never fully approved by rules, nor improvised (Ammerman 2020).

Through the experiences of key informants, this study sought to identify the emerging sensitivities of young Catholics and how communities articulate their proposals for faith education.

3. The Methodology of Research

This study explores three dimensions of the relationship between young believers and the Catholic Church: faith education proposals, characteristics of young believers, and representation of the Church emerging from their experience.

This study proposed semi-structured interviews3 (Schwartz and Jacobs 1987; Silverman 2000; Delli Zotti 2021; Rose and Johnson 2020) with 18 key informants from the Diocese of Rome (the metropolitan area of Roma Capitale, Italy). The peculiarity of the survey field (the Church of Rome is the diocese of the Pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church) becomes a characteristic and original feature of the results.

The semi-structured interview allows us to enter the existential dimension of the interviewees, who were encouraged to reflect on the life experiences (Balasanyan and Gevorgyan 2024) of the young believers they educate. The structure of the interviews starts from a reinterpretation of the dimensions of religiosity (Glock and Stark 1965). The first two dimensions refer to the classic dimensions of belonging, practice, belief, and experience (Pace 2021), and the third detects the educational paths that the interviewees propose to young people:

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Community membership and religious practice, to understand the perspective of young people towards the Church community (the main question is “Which Church statements do young people find distant and which interesting?”);

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Faith and experience, to analyze the identity and spiritual dimension (the main question is “With what words would you describe a young believer today and what distinguishes him from the non-believer?”);

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Education, to focus on the lived experience of the young faithful in the parish community (the main question is “What is your experience with young people? What activities do you propose and with what objectives?”).

Particular importance has been given to the dimension of spirituality (Palmisano 2010) of young people and to practice, understood as an experience that transcends the distinction between sacred and profane (Ammerman 2020).

This research aims to investigate the involvement of young believers in their relationship with the Church and the educational proposals offered to them. In this sense, given the impossibility of interviewing all the young people in the communities, the selected key informants were asked to describe through their lenses the experience of the young people they educate, despite the limitations this entails. However, key informants were chosen based on their experience. Respondents have been playing an educational role within their faith communities for at least five years, and they have attended and continue to attend training courses in their parishes or home associations. The age and the life history of key informants allows them to grasp the difficulties and opportunities of the young people they care for. Moreover, they are also young believers who question the relationship between faith and current challenges. Therefore, they can provide an original look at what other young people are experiencing.

Two criteria led to the choice of respondents: one is indications suggested by the Youth Pastoral Service of the Diocese of Rome, which collaborated with the research, and the other is an analysis of Rome’s urban space to identify heterogeneous areas in the territory (Lelo et al. 2021; cf. mapparoma.info). Moreover, the interviewees are young people engaged in activities involving other young people or teenagers. The generational placement (Mannheim 2019) of the interviewees belonging to two anagraphic cohorts, leads them to live the experience of the Catholic Church of the “New Millennium”. Their faith community is perceived as a minority in the cultural panorama of Italy compared to previous generations (Diotallevi 2024). Furthermore, these young people live in the Church after II Vatican Council and they know the contradictions of the reform processes that occurred subsequently (see the debate that characterized the last two pontificates of Benedict XVI and Francis).

The field research was carried out between June 2023 and January 2024 and involved 18 subjects between 19 and 35 years old belonging to different ecclesial realities: informal groups, Catholic Action, Neocatechumenals, Agesci Scouts, and the Youth Ministry Service.

The protagonists chosen for the research guarantee a variety of educational paths of faith proposal. Their socio-structural characteristics are as follows:

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Eight males over 31 (six between 31 and 35 years old and two between 19 and 23 years old), including three high school graduates, five college graduates, two college students, and six employees;

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Ten females (four between 27 and 34 years old and six between 19 and 25 years old), including four high school graduates, six college graduates, and four college students. Of these, three were employees and three were self-employed/volunteer workers.

The interviews were analyzed using a critical, reflective, and positional approach (Stuart 2017). Topics and keywords were identified, with the support of NVvio software, and agreed upon during the coding process based on the relevance of the theoretical framework and the purpose of the research (Saldana 2013), which aims to explore the relationship between youth, faith, and Church. The keywords, identified through the Word Frequency Query, are represented below by a word cloud (Figure 1).

The most highlighted sensitizing concepts from the interviews are children (216) and youth (150), church (197), group (197) and together (93), meaning (175), people (171) and person (112), life (170), parish (160) and community (72), faith (158), good (114), beauty (83) and beautiful (73), sharing (76), the world (74), prayer (68), difficult (65), encounters (61), the other (60), need (58), talking (55), experience (54) and activity (53) and so on.

The analysis then focused on the interview passages where the concepts are present, to understand their frame and meaning.

4. Faith Educational Proposal

The starting point for the analysis is based on understanding how educators try to guide young people in the faith through paths that can be more or less structured and organized. In the first case, for example, one educator states that they try “alternate meetings that are more formative from a personal and growth perspective with those that are perhaps a little more theological information”4. This proposes a deductive process where young people can be accompanied to understand the meaning of life and to face today. In the case of a less structured educational proposal, one educator recounts how she “really likes to get [the youngsters] to do practical things, such as taking them to Caritas, introducing them to outside people who can talk to them about something in particular, and even […] talking and constructing a thought and then actually getting them to construct something together”5. In this second way, young people can understand how to transform something concrete into an abstract thought through a step-by-step process.

The interviewees are aware of the ineffectiveness of the religious socialization process (Garelli 2006) and the centrality of a subjective choice for their faith life (Lyotard 1984). Three goals emerge from educational proposals.

The first refers to sociality and the ability to develop moments of togetherness; as one educator explains: “to try to give a minimum sense of belonging […] and also a sense of group among them, above all an idea of wanting to be well together”. Flory and Miller (2010) speak of expressive communalism, where each feature of the young believer’s spiritual commitment is nourished by the presence of others. For example, spending time with “fellow believers can, in a Durkheimian sense, sensitize individuals to spiritual experiences” (Crespi and Ricucci 2021).

The second is to help and support young people in their personal and faith maturation. One educator recognizes in young people the search for “a new approach to the world for them […] they need to reaffirm who they are, what they can do”6. The goal is to “grow them in faith and empower them to be independent”7 and to lay the foundation for young people to build critical and reflective thinking, to be proactive and to volunteer.

The third is to offer young people an alternative lifestyle from known Church experiences in the parish community. One interviewee says “We try to convey to these young people in this area the idea of living a life of better choices, of choosing between good and bad and opting for a healthy life. Many of the young people who attend the parish come from vulnerable backgrounds; the key informant continues, In this area of Rome, there is drug dealing. […] You go to the intersections [and deal], you get EUR 60–70 a day, even just by being a lookout, instead of going to work or study. Before discussing faith, we have to get them into a different perspective of life”8. The experience shows us the attempt of the Church to combat social malaise in at-risk areas.

Another characteristic of educational paths offered is to start from young people’s needs. The interviewees maintain that it is crucial to encourage moments of sociability, because “at this age, the important thing is to socialize and create a group”9; of meeting, because “as a parish, we are very focused more on maintaining a sort of spirit in the beauty of being together than on passing on actual notions”10; of confrontation, to “ask if they are experiencing situations that are bigger than themselves, for advice, to get their idea about that advice and the situation they are experiencing”11; and of listening, because “they are used to confusion […] and then have the opportunity to express themselves and understand that someone is there to listen to them and waste time with them they are very surprised”12. Creating a community space and a welcoming atmosphere that does not want to “possess young people”13 becomes a central element, since educators recognize it as a need of young people in the moments spent together.

Believing is a work in progress, not a dimension of life taken for granted once and for all. The young people who attend small groups are people who question the motivations for their faith. For some key informants, the proposals favor experiences that “start from the concrete”14 and can stimulate encounters through which “love fraternity”15 is experienced. For young believers, it is relevant to realize that they are important to someone, and this happens when one can “make them feel that they are loved by God”16.

Voluntary work is also included in the paths, during which young people get to know realities other than their own, encounter people with vulnerabilities, and come into contact with a part of the world that society often distances from everyday life. With voluntary work, therefore, young educators feel called upon and involved. An interview affirms how they collaborate “with a solidarity emporium, … where poor people go shopping with a points card distributed by the municipality. The boys help by being shop assistants for free”17.

Many key informants propose voluntary activities to encourage openness towards others because “many of our activities focus precisely on understanding and teaching how to be inclusive”18.

A further aspect that emerged from the research is innovative capacity. In some cases, experiences have been devised that go beyond the confines of the parish community, offering them to those who feel the need for opportunities for meditation and sharing. One proposal, for example, aims to promote spirituality, inviting people to deepen their emotions and feelings.

I tell you this. With a musical group, we organized some evenings in the small square in front of the parish. Some stairs form an amphitheater. We presented an unreleased song by the band and then it was shared. Anyone who wanted could sit on “the chair of poetry” and express what they felt. […] We had various meetings. Last time we were 150.

(21, w, high school degree, parish in Casetta Mattei, suburban area)

Another experience beyond parish boundaries aims to build a network of young people through podcasts broadcast on the web that discuss topics that delve into the sense of life and relationships.

The experience that I have had in these two years of Pastoral Care has certainly been the radio, which is the voice of young people […]. It is something that we did during Covid because there were no opportunities to see each other, and we took advantage of it to do this project. From there, everything exploded when we went to all the parishes in Rome.

(23, m, high school degree, parish in Bravetta, suburban area)

A further aspect is the search for spirituality through solitary or communitarian experiences that increase the reflective and religious dimension.

I attended World Youth Day this year. I went to Lisbon with this group I was attending, I also did four days of spiritual exercises in total silence, in the sense that no one spoke and it was truly devastating on a psychological level, and also for the issues we faced, but I was well and I really felt like I had come to some conclusions.

(21, f, high school degree, parish in GrottaPerfetta, urban area)

And again:

The beauty in nature helps me a lot. To stay in a wild nature brings me closer to faith, and I understand how great God is. […] Usually, we go to summer camps with the kids and go to the mountains because the meaning behind the walks, the effort, and helping each other even in difficult moments is important.

(35, m, high school degree, parish in Quarticciolo, suburban area)

Young people talk about how they seek the meaning of spirituality for themselves and for those they educate in the faith. With many experiences, they understand what role spirituality has in their life and their journey of faith (Giordan and Sbalchiero 2020).

What appears from the interviews collected is, thus, the desire to build educational proposals that aim to create open community experiences rather than training in religious opinions that can be considered common heritage (Bebiroglu et al. 2015; Bichi and Bignardi 2015). One educator confirms that “the Christian is not the one who only goes to mass but is the one who goes to bring the new message in everyday life. It is also a matter of taking care of what is around me: people and the Common Good”19.

5. Forms of Religious Expression Among Young Believers

This study individuates three common characteristics shared by the young believers interviewed and those they educate, in turn:

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The sense of belief, which enables young people to turn their gaze to the transcendent and distinguishes them from non-believers;

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The way of living their spirituality, which enables them to place their religiosity and practice within a horizon of meaning;

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The practice through which young people become active witnesses in their daily lives.

The common thread that connects all the experiences is the dimension of critical thought, which seems to characterize the young believers.

The first characteristic concerns the element of transcending20. In the responses to the question “What does belief mean to a young person?” it emerged that “it means relying on something that clearly cannot be well understood”21, or, again, “grasping onto something greater than reality, something that is beyond us”22. This dimension of belief seems to distinguish young non-believers from believers, so much so that when asked “How would you describe a young believer today and what distinguishes him or her from a non-believer?” one respondent states.

I would call him a voice against the tide. A believer always tries to see his life from a different perspective. The non-believer is more focused on achieving trouble-free happiness with as little difficulty as possible and the believer sees difficulties as a means to a different life.

(24, w, Masters’s degree, parish in Furio Camillo, urban area)

Although believers and non-believers often share the same values, many young people emphasized the extra gear that transcendence gives people and the importance of believing in order to understand the sense of life, assigning religion a theodicy function of attributing meaning to events or enduring situations of emotional stress (Malinowski 1962).

A young believer is a more peaceful person, a rich person in the proper sense of life, of meaning. I see the nonbelievers as people who are more scared and much more searching.

(25, f, Masters’s degree, Church in Monteverde, central area)

A second characteristic of the young people interviewed concerns their spirituality (Giordan and Sbalchiero 2020), associated with a more personal and practical sphere and their relationship with God. It is a personalized but not individualized form of spirituality that fits within its community of reference. One of the practices that young people identified as essential to living their spirituality pertains to the moment of prayer, as reported below, in the two experiences:

This is the classic moment when you stop. As an educator, you have to stop. You take a moment to talk to God and try to reorient yourself.

(34, m, Masters’s degree, Catholic Action in Talenti, suburban area)

I think of those prayers, those desert moments that offer a little chance to reason, meditate, and pray about yourself and your relationship with God. It’s a time to be able to look within and get into dialogue with God.

(32, m, high school degree, Church in Pietralata-Tiburtina, suburban area)

This spiritual dimension involves multiple practices in young people’s lives (Wach 1988; Ammerman 2020), whose element becomes active testimony, the third characteristic of young believers. To the question “What does witnessing mean to a young person?” one young person states.

To testify means to show your belief in your life: who you are and what you believe in. You have to witness it starting from you, from the little things, from how you behave and stand to others. In the way you really do goodness; words are of no use to us if, in the end, there is a concrete dissonance of behavior, acts, and deed.

(24, w, Master’s degree, Church in Torre Angela, suburban area)

Religiosity then becomes a concrete, everyday way of life.

Another element that seems to characterize the religious youth experience concerns their awareness of, and need to critically reflect on, religious teachings offered to them (Smith and Snell 2009; Petts 2014). It stands as a common thread linking all experiences. Young people do not seem to accept indiscriminately the body of teachings they have received, but attempt to understand their meaning and construct their way of life (Ammerman 2020) by placing it within the plurality of life worlds that characterize human beings (Berger 2014). The critical attitude becomes a model for other young believers, and something which, stimulated by their educators, places the religious and secular spheres in a dialectical dialog to produce a useful synthesis for their daily lives. Thus reports one educator interviewed:

One thing I notice is that they don’t accept answers so easily. If something happens, they are not satisfied when I say: “It has to be done this way”. They want to know why. This helps me because […] it also gives me a chance not to fossilize on some things.

(35, m, High school, Parish in Quarticciolo, suburban area)

The portrait that emerged from the experiences of the young people interviewed raises questions about the new characteristics emerging among young believers. As spiritual tinkerers (Wuthnow 2011), they construct their own religious identity (Collins-Mayo 2012) that continuously synthesizes elements of belief, spirituality (Giordan and Sbalchiero 2020), and concrete lifestyles. In such a synthesis, critical reasoning seems to characterize new young believers and can be the fundamental requirement for constructing one’s sense of doing and of being a believer, in everyday life.

6. Representations of the Church Emerging from Young People’s Experiences

During the interviews, the key informants described how the young Catholics evaluate their relationship with the Church. Their answers help us understand their sense of belonging. Scholars point to a distance between the young people and the value system proposed by the Catholic Church (Davie 2023; Garelli 2020; Cipriani 2020) and the presence of an individualized experience of faith (Hervieu-Léger 1999), based on the spiritual dimension (Palmisano and Pannofino 2017). The scenario appears much more complex when a young believer is involved in their faith community.

The emergent images present a double appearance. The first takes shape from the direct experiences of the key informants. Its characteristics are positive and involving. As we have seen, the educational proposals play on group activities during which their peers and teenagers socialize and share experiences, emotions, moments of spirituality, and training. The educational paths become a practice of community that builds relationships with peers, educators, and catechists (secular believers or priests). The young people inside this group of peers feel welcomed without any barriers. The first goal is to create relationships: “In the meantime, the important is to socialize and try to form a group”23.

A young person feels involved in a community when he is totally accepted. So, when he is not excluded by others, when he feels involved in activities.

(24, f, Masters’s degree, parish in Torre Angela, suburban area)

Inside the groups, boys and girls would live out their Church experience. One interviewer underlines the need to “find a place in which you belong, the need to be close to people that do something beautiful for others”24. These micro-communities allow them to feel involved, considering who they are “in their uniqueness and their authenticity”25; these groups also permit them to feel responsible towards others.

Participation in individual peer groups derives wider belonging to the community proposal in the area (i.e., parish), from which young people obtain positive messages for their lives:

Well, I think at least in my experience of Church, so our parish, not the universe. Our parish tries to give hope. This is perhaps the key that you try to give […] hope.

(29, f, Masters degree, parish in Infernetto, suburban area)

Hope is a perspective that this young educator appreciates, even if she emphasizes that, in this case, she is not talking about the universal Church, but rather about her parish, because this is the experience in which she is involved. Another interviewee senses agreement in the demonstration of openness toward others that the Church has offered her.

I believe that one of the most beautiful things the Church taught me was precisely that of empathizing with others […] I believe that perhaps this could be the greatest thing that the Church can offer today in a world where there is so much hatred and so much prejudice.

(27, f, Masters degree, parish in Acilia, suburban area)

The second image presented by the interviewees takes shape from the indirect experience of the institutional Church. The interviewees state that young people feel part of the Church but are not in complete harmony with it. “There are unacceptable rigidities”26.

They see the Church as a reality that prevents certain freedoms: living together without marriage or the discovery of a different gender identity, for example. So, the Church certainly has an image to reform for young people. When one begins to know it internally, one discovers that the message is love for oneself and others. But the external image is different.

(24, f, Masters’s degree, parish in Furio Camillo, urban area)

Institutional assumptions about sexuality and gender identity issues are considered distant from real lives. Young people consider indications of sexual life to be “distant from their life”27. The ecclesial arguments about their private sphere are considered not central to their life of faith, nor to participation in the community. On this topic, young people seem disinterested in official rules rather than committed to discussing or opposing them.

Institutional statements on LBTQ+ issues are the most problematic. The young people interviewed express their dissent, and observe the contradiction of a Church that professes to welcome and then rejects people who declare a non-binary identity28.

This generation disagrees with statements about sexual identity. Young people feel distant from what the Church says. I am a girl who fights for human rights […] even for homoparental families. However, I should discuss these issues with the Church.

(19, m, high school degree, parish in Tor Sapienza, suburban Area)

On this topic, group experiences that promote equality and recognition of one’s uniqueness clash with formal declarations that lead to exclusion and marginalization.

I have a friend who had a bad experience. He is homosexual and not accepted by his parish. He went to talk about it with everyone because he went through a process of accepting this thing and did not receive help. He felt rejected.

(21, f, high school degree, parish in Casetta Mattei, suburban area)

Instead, institutional declarations are appreciated and shared when the Church speaks out on two topics: welcoming people in poverty and stimulating reflections on the meaning of life, as we can see from the passages of the following interviews.

The interesting statements are all those that concern the welcome of the other, the help in difficulty. These statements leave their mark because they show a Church that takes to heart the creation of a better world.

(32, m, high school degree, parish in Tiburtino, suburban area)

Young people find the Church’s interventions interesting, which invite them to reflect on life, on their own life, not only from a religious point of view but also on ways of living in the world.

(19, m, high school degree, parish in Tor Sapienza, suburban area)

The images collected show young people living their belonging to a community of faith based on their concrete experience. They claim to be Catholic because they encounter welcoming environments that allow them to express themselves and make them protagonists29. On the other hand, the institutional dimension of the Church remains alien to some.

You ask me about the Church in general (universal). The parish is my experience of the Church. To me, the Church is something concrete that I live in this place. Then there is the Pope and the bishops, but that is a Church distant to me because, in the end, he is lucky to meet the Pope once in a lifetime: a moment-long experience. I have no relationship with the bishops. The Church, to me, is this place (my parish), nothing else.

(34, m, Masters degree, parish in Pietralata, suburban area)

Other young people, however, feel challenged by institutional statements that make them feel embarrassed because those statements end up pushing people away instead of bringing them closer.

Many times we remain too anchored to something that I cannot describe. As if the Church does not understand that we are in the world. We are not of the world, but we are in the world. […] I would like the Church to open its horizons and to look at inquiries of the world with open eyes.

(24, f, Masters degree, parish in Torre Angela, suburban area)

In this context, the interviewees contrast the institutional Church with their community experience. Even when they find themselves in debates that criticize the Church, young people invite their interlocutors to see their personal experiences and not fixate on the statements of principle.

7. Conclusions

These results allowed us to analyze the belonging and belief of young Catholics by placing it within their relationship with the Catholic Church in Rome. The analysis of the interviews with key informants focused on three dimensions: characteristics of young believers, their image of the Church, and educational proposals in which they are involved. The results are not sufficiently broad to be generalized. However, this study reveals some significant trends that can be the basis of future analyses for developing the relationship between young people, faith, and religious communities.

According to Ammerman (2014), religious practice materializes in life. Faith only makes sense if mixed with everyday life. The importance of participation in rites is very marginal. Three characteristics describe the figure of the young Roman Catholic: first, the tension towards transcendence in the search for meaning in life is not abstract. They try to respond simultaneously to their hunger for meaning and the challenges of the present time, and are less tied to a traditional religious socialization process (Anderson 2020; Putnam and Campbell 2012). Secondly, they have a critical attitude towards conventional teachings, which they do not accept as absolute truth but analyze and understand to give them new meaning and fit them into a personalized framework (Twenge et al. 2015; Pontifical University of the Holy Cross 2024). Thirdly, they take care of the spiritual dimension, which is, at the same time, personalized and thought for oneself (Palmisano 2010), but not individualized and in dynamic comparison with the community of belonging. In fact, although to believe or not remains an individual choice (Berger 1970; Aldrige 2013), young people involved in the search for faith experience the choice in a strong relationship with their community. The figure that emerges from the interviews describes young people who live in a pluralistic society whose paths of faith are individualized (Luckmann 1967); however, the Weberian formula of the Church as an institution of salvation remains valid for them, even if this formula is relativized by alternative proposals that they encounter in their daily life.

The image of the Church that emerged from the interviews is not monolithic. The interviewees describe the face of a community Church and an institutional Church. The image of the first is friendly, based on an intense relationship established with young people. Interviewees emphasize that young people feel welcomed in their uniqueness and originality; their faith community becomes a reference point for proposing alternative ways of life or worldviews: support for the weakest, openness to others, and hope for change.

The institutional image is more complicated: on the one hand, young people criticize it, since it considers some moral rules abstract and tends to marginalize some categories of people. On the other hand, young people appreciate the institutional Church when it promotes inclusion and stimulates reflection on the meaning of life. Therefore, a belief without belonging does not emerge (Davie 2021): the results show that the sense of belonging decreases as the institutional dimension of the Church increases.

The development of educational proposals seems to consider both the characteristics of young people and their plural representation of the Church. The crucial point becomes the subjective dimension, while acceptance of dogmas, values, or the practice of rites is less central (Collins-Mayo 2012). The objectives of the pathways aim for personal, human, and religious maturation. Sociality and experiential proposal become vectors for promoting community belonging. Education in the experiences analyzed becomes the basis for building a relationship, rather than a teaching opportunity.