As the Diocese of Brooklyn sees an increase in people converting to the Catholic faith year over year, Father Joseph Gibino said the fruit of the Synod on Synodality is essential to maintaining the momentum.
“Synodality, at the core, is about how we journey together,” Father Gibino, vicar for evangelization and catechesis for the diocese, told The Tablet. “We’re really looking at an opportunity to show how relevant and important faith is for the 21st century. That’s our evangelization — that day-to-day living witness of the faith.”
“It’s when we meet living people for whom faith matters that we really see faith lived out. And I always say that we have to be a warm, welcoming people,” Father Gibino explained. “We don’t want people to walk away saying, ‘I don’t want to be like them.’ Instead, ‘I want to be just like them.’ And that’s our everyday faith communities in action.”
The 2024 edition of the Official Catholic Directory shows that more than 137,000 non-infant minors and adults converted to Catholicism in the U.S. in 2023. Eleven dioceses had more than 2,000 non-infant receptions into the Church, 42 had between 500 and 1,000 non-infant receptions, 65 had between 200 and 499 non-infant receptions, and 23 had between 100 and 200 non-infant receptions, the data shows.
According to the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Office of the Secretariat for Evangelization and Catechesis numbers released in March, 693 catechumens participated in the Rite of Election service on the first Sunday of Lent, where Bishop Robert Brennan formally accepted them into the faith after they completed the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults program.
The figure, technically the number for 2024 when the catechumens completed the OCIA program, was a marked increase from the 381 catechumens in 2023, and the latest in what’s been a years-long steady increase for the diocese.
In 2022, there were 356 catechumens, and 298 in 2021, according to diocesan records.
Father Gibino attributed the increase, in large part, to the number of immigrants entering the diocese. He specifically highlighted immigrants from the diocese’s Hispanic community and from the diocese’s Asian community.
“That’s a very important piece for us — that we offer so many of our immigrants a real possibility to encounter Christ in new and exciting ways for them,” Father Gibino said. “I think also for part of our immigrant community, here they have the freedom to experience the faith in communities that they may not have had before they arrived here.”
“So, for us, we in the Diocese of Brooklyn always have to take immigration into account as a very important factor for all of our faith experiences, and that is especially true of the Asian community and our Hispanic/Latino community,” he added.
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Father Gibino said the impact of newcomers to the faith in the diocese is clear.
“There’s a new vibrancy, a new excitement, new ways to worship in the sense of what cultures bring to prayer, and all of that just enhances the worship of the diocese in tremendous ways,” he said. “Definitely, I see a change.”