In the days following the National Eucharistic Congress last week, Bishop Andrew Cozzens, the board chairman of the Congress, received calls from three survivors of clerical sexual abuse. They had either attended the event or watched it on television or online. They all told the bishop the same thing: that the Congress was an experience of profound healing for them.
“Two of them said that, for the first time in many years, they were able to say, ‘I love being Catholic,’” Bishop Cozzens said in an interview with America.
It was moments like these, and the experience of the event as a whole, that gave Bishop Cozzens spiritual consolation as the Congress closed out. The bishop, who spearheaded the three-year National Eucharistic Revival, said, “I felt a great fullness of God, one I prayed that everyone would be filled with.” Having witnessed it all come together, he had a sense that “dreams come true.” Not just for himself, he said, but for all those who had made it happen.
Taking place in downtown Indianapolis at the city’s convention center and Lucas Oil Stadium—which only a few weeks before had been converted into a natatorium for the U.S. Olympic Team swim trials—the Congress had upward of 55,000 attendees.
Highlighted by several liturgies and evening evangelizing sessions, the Congress included Sister Bethany Madonna, Father James Shea, Gloria Purvis,Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart and several others as speakers. Most evening sessions included praise-and-worship music with performers like Dave and Lauren Moore and Matt Maher.
They were preceded throughout the day by breakout sessions and panel discussions on topics like the sociology of American religion, best practices for parishes, retaining youth in the church, the theology of the Eucharist, Catholic approaches to health care, sexuality and the pro-life movement, and many others.
There were exhibitions on Eucharistic miracles, the Shroud of Turin and the life of Blessed Carlos Acutis, plus live podcast recordings and concerts, a 24-hour adoration chapel, and ample opportunities for confession. A marketplace hall held more than a hundred booths from schools, religious orders, media outlets, evangelizing groups, religious goods vendors and other Catholic-affiliated organizations.
A Eucharistic procession took place over a mile-long route through the city; according to Indianapolis police, it was joined by 60,000 people. (The police reported that it was a bigger turnout than the annual Indy 500 parade.)
Amid all of this activity, one of the most powerful things for Bishop Cozzens, he said, was the impact the Congress had on his fellow bishops and priests.
“Bishops kept coming up to me and hugging me and thanking me and told me how personally moving it was for them,” Bishop Cozzens said. “Even for the bishops to walk out on the procession and get cheered!”
Bishop Cozzens and I agreed that, in the U.S. church today, it is not a common occurrence for bishops to be literally applauded by their people.
Bishop Cozzens also pointed out the effect of the Congress on priests, who have been battered over the past four years by Covid-19 restrictions, reduced Mass attendance and ever-bigger workloads. He said they, too, found the event helpful, consoling and unifying.
Coming off a previous role as the head of the diocesan phase of the Synod of Synodality in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Bishop Cozzens said he used methods of synodality to help plan the revival.
“We did 20 to 25 listening sessions with parish and diocesan leaders and evangelizers and apostolic leaders and priests and bishops—a mix of people,” he said. “And we sent them proposals for a Eucharistic revival and said, ‘If you were going to do this, what would you do?’”
It was mostly laypeople, he said, who planned the Eucharistic Revival. The core team was a priest, a bishop, a laywoman and a female religious. “We became friends,” Bishop Cozzens said, “and it was our communion that the planning of the event flowed out of.” They were able to highlight for other lay Catholics that “you can do this, you can pray to evangelize.”
In other words, the task of evangelization and the revival itself is not merely a top-down process run by the hierarchy of the church. While the idea for the revival was sparked by a concern among bishops over the strength of Catholics’ belief in the real presence in the Eucharist, it had to be implemented by the people of God.
As for the budget, which was criticized as excessive by some commenters, Bishop Cozzens said that they initially “highballed it at $28 million, and the revival ended up costing $14 million.”
(A personal aside to those who complained that “all of that money spent on the revival” could have been spent better elsewhere. That mindset is born of a poisonous dichotomy: “There is only so much money to go around, and there is not enough to both create beauty and serve the poor. To build cathedrals and build fair housing. To put on a stirring liturgy and train better liturgists. You have to choose one over the other.” This is a scarcity mentality and is based on capitalist-inflected and metric-based thinking. There is, in fact, enough money to go around if we believe in a God of abundance. You cannot measure the powerful impact and long-term fruits of what a $14 million evangelizing revival can do for the people of God.)
Bishop Cozzens said the guiding document for the entire revival has been Pope Francis’ encyclical “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”). “Encounter and mission,” Bishop Cozzens said. “Encounter and mission.”
In fact, following the Congress, the revival moves on to its third “missioning” year, centered around the Walk With One initiative. Catholics are called to encounter and invite one person in their life into a relationship with Jesus Christ so that over the next year that person may take one step closer to the church. The intent of the revival is that it not end in 2025 but that it is lived out for years to come.
America was at the 10th annual National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. Find additional essays and reflections here.
