New information about the sacraments is being collected in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, helping to provide a fuller picture of the sacramental life of the local Church and highlighting its members’ interest in, and commitment to, the Catholic faith.
This year, the archdiocese began collecting information from its 185 parishes about the number of non-infant baptisms and non-infant receptions into the Catholic Church during the Easter season.
Susan Mulheron — chancellor of canonical affairs for the archdiocese, who helped to gather the data — said interest in this archdiocesan data grew as various dioceses across the United States reported increases in the number of people seeking sacraments of initiation this year and as archdiocesan priests began sharing that “they’re seeing a lot of interest.”
To gather the information, a brief form was emailed to parish leaders to fill out. Mulheron said she couldn’t recall the archdiocese previously collecting this specific information. The chancellor’s office will collect this data going forward “so we’ll have data in subsequent years to compare,” Mulheron said.
This year, there were 502 non-infant baptisms and 620 receptions into the Church during the Easter season in the archdiocese, according to the data. Mulheron said a non-infant baptism is defined as an individual over the age of 7 being baptized in the Catholic Church. A non-infant reception into the Church is defined as a baptized Christian over the age of 7 coming into full communion with the Catholic Church.
“Just over the course of a couple weeks, we gained that many people who intentionally went forward and said, ‘I want to be Catholic adults,'” Mulheron said. “That’s exciting.”
‘The Holy Spirit has been very active’
This Easter season, Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul, Incarnation in Minneapolis, St. Odilia in Shoreview, St. Peter in Richfield, and the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul were the five parishes that reported the most non-infant baptisms, with 26, 19, 19, 17 and 16 people receiving the sacrament, respectively.
Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Minneapolis, St. Michael in St. Michael, Blessed Sacrament in St. Paul, St. Odilia and St. Vincent de Paul in Osseo were the five parishes that reported the most non-infant receptions into the Church this Easter season, with 27, 25, 25, 23 and 18 people being welcomed, respectively.
“It has been a true blessing at the Easter Vigil over the last couple of years to welcome so many boys and girls and men and women into our Catholic Christian faith,” Father James Peterson, pastor of St. Odilia, said.
“This year, we had people receiving the sacraments of Christian initiation who were English and Spanish speakers and those connected with the church and those connected with our parish grade school,” Father Peterson wrote in an email, reflecting on the 19 non-infant baptisms and 23 non-infant receptions into the Church welcomed at the parish this Easter season.
“The Holy Spirit has been very active in the hearts of folks within and from beyond our community,” Father Peterson wrote. “There is a culture at St. Odilia with joyfully sharing the good news and — as have been trends throughout the world — people have been responding generously to the promptings of the Lord.”
During his homily at the Easter Vigil Mass April 19 at the Cathedral of St. Paul, Archbishop Bernard Hebda shared his gratitude with those who responded to this prompting and were being welcomed into the Church.
“Know how grateful I am for your witness — so grateful in your willingness to choose Christ, even when there are difficult circumstances,” the archbishop said. “You, brothers and sisters, are truly an answer to our prayers — not only to my prayers but to the prayers of the Church. We’ve been fervently praying that the Lord will renew his Church and he’s doing that through you.”
The archbishop spoke of Christ’s faithfulness “to the promise that he made to us: that if we’re baptized into his death, we will share in his resurrection. That’s what makes this day greater than any other. Not only did Christ conquer sin and death himself, but he offers to us a share in that victory. I suspect that that is what motivates those who will be baptized here this evening and those who will be confirmed in such great number.”
Archbishop Hebda encouraged all those gathered for the vigil Mass to “pray as well for a deeper sense of the great gift that is the sacramental life of our Church.”
PARTICIPATION IN THE FAITH
According to the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study released this year by the Pew Research Center, 82% of Catholics in the United States say religion is very important or somewhat important in their lives (compared with 64% of all U.S. adults and 83% of all religiously affiliated U.S. adults).
In terms of religious service attendance, 40% of U.S. Catholics say they attend religious services in person monthly or more often (compared with 33% of all U.S. adults) and 21% watch religious services online or on TV monthly or more often (compared with 23% of all U.S. adults), according to the study.
The 2023-24 study reports 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christian, indicating the decline of Christianity in the U.S. appears to be leveling off — the percentage of adults identifying as Christian “has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%” between 2019 and 2024, according to the Pew Research Center. The study reports 19% identify as Catholic — a number that has been relatively consistent in Pew Research Center surveys conducted since 2014, which have reported between 19% and 21% identifying as Catholic.
The Vatican’s Statistical Yearbook of the Church, released at the end of March on the sacramental life of the Catholic Church globally, reported that there were approximately 2.7 million adult baptisms registered worldwide in 2023. That number was roughly 20% of the approximately 13.2 million baptisms registered worldwide that year, according to the Catholic News Service (CNS) reporting on Vatican statistics. Generally, the Vatican reported total baptisms had declined from 2022 to 2023 (13,327,037 in 2022 to 13,150,780 in 2023), according to CNS.
The Vatican reported an increase in the number of confirmations and first holy Communions registered: Nearly 7.7 million people were confirmed worldwide in 2023 (compared with 7.4 million people worldwide in 2022), and 9.1 million people received their first Communion in 2023 (compared with 8.7 million people in 2022), according to CNS.
The Vatican did caution that the numbers published via the yearbook were based on responses it received from surveys it had sent; of 3,188 dioceses and other jurisdictions, roughly 140 did not send information, CNS reported.
