FLATBUSH — Pope Leo XIV’s May 30 audience for the Charismatic Catholic Renewal exceeded expectations for the 3,000 attendees who were eager to learn if he would carry on the papal commitment to the movement that began in the 1960s.
That was the assessment of Msgr. Joseph Malagreca, pastor of Holy Cross Parish in Flatbush, who attended the audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall.
Msgr. Malagreca is also the representative for the Americas at the Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Service (CHARIS). The event was Pope Leo’s first official outreach to CHARIS since he was elected on May 8, 2025.
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“The CHARIS office is in Rome, and it’s a pontifical office,” Msgr. Malagreca recently explained to The Tablet. “But nobody in the office had ever talked to him or met with him before. We wanted to have a face-to-face experience with him, and he granted it.”
Msgr. Malagreca said it was a great meeting with a lot of synergy percolating among the attendees from throughout the world, most of them from European countries.
“[Pope Leo] seemed to know very well about the Charismatic Renewal,” he said. “He reminded us to go back to our roots and invited us to evangelize with power.
“It was really very exciting.”
Pope Leo praised previous pontiffs in how they supported the movement’s growth.
“I, too, wish to foster the relationship of mutual respect, closeness and support between the See of Peter and the great family of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal,” Pope Leo told the May 30 audience.
The Charismatic Renewal (CCR) movement has reached an estimated 100 million people in 238 countries, according to information from CHARIS.
It began during the cultural and political upheaval of the 1960s when students and professors at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh attended a 1967 retreat, where they felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. They subsequently sought to share the experience, which spread to other campuses, fueling momentum for the CCR.
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In 1969, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement affirming the movement.
Msgr. Malagreca is the spiritual advisor for the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Charismatic Catholic Renewal ministry. That office is led by Father John Maduri, pastor of the newly merged Mary Queen of Heaven-St. Bernard Clairvaux Parish in Mill Basin.
Father Maduri could not be reached for comment, but in an earlier interview with The Tablet, he described the events following Duquesne University as a new “outpouring of the Holy Spirit, like a new Pentecost upon the Church.”
“And then from there, it just spread like wildfire throughout the world,” he added.
On May 30, Pope Leo shared praise for his predecessor, Pope Francis who called for the creation of CHARIS in 2019.
Pope Leo quoted the last pope while reminding the audience that he “outlined your path as ‘evangelization, spiritual ecumenism, caring for the poor and needy, and welcoming the marginalized. All of it is based on worship! The foundation of the renewal is worshiping God!’ ”
Msgr. Malagreca said those CCR tenets are gathering their own momentum in the Diocese of Brooklyn.
He described how the local CCR office supports “Life in the Spirit” seminars, helps sponsor annual events like the huge Hispanic CCR gathering in Stony Point, and oversees parish-level charismatic prayer groups.
The fruits of these efforts are linked to the recent boost in Mass attendance, especially among youth and young adults, Msgr. Malagreca said.
“The Catholic revival has a lot of focus on Gen Z as a new spiritual generation,” he said. “I do a lot of work with our prayer groups for the Spanish and the Haitians, and they have a lot of that Gen Z representation.
“And the Spanish are experiencing a unique explosion.”
Msgr. Malagreca said that after the pope’s audience for CHARIS, the attendees met to discuss plans to celebrate the 2,000th anniversary of Christ’s resurrection in 2033, an event gaining attention among Catholics and Protestants.
“That’s really starting to become our focus,” he said. “It’s only seven years away.”