PRINCETON, N.J. — While other students might be in class or socializing at lunch, a group of young Catholics attends Mass every weekday at noon at the Princeton University Chapel.
They sing Gregorian chants in Latin, pray and receive Communion at a side chapel — inside the huge, nondenominational Princeton Chapel — that young, devoted Catholics see as a sacred refuge in a mostly liberal and secular Ivy League environment.
“I feel that people’s faith is so strong here,” student Logan Nelson said of the dedicated Catholic space where he attends daily Mass. “It feels like a home — even more so than my own house.”
The Gothic university chapel was built in 1928. At the time, Princeton says, its capacity to seat more than 2,000 people was second in size only to King’s College Chapel at Cambridge University.
Today, the chapel hosts interfaith services, concerts and weddings throughout the academic year and is known by the university as “the bridge between town and gown.”
On May 8, Catholic students were worshipping as usual at daily Mass in the side chapel when the service was interrupted by news alerts on their phones. In the Vatican, white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel, indicating that a new leader of their faith had been elected.
The Rev. Zachary Swantek, Princeton’s Catholic chaplain, told the group to gather at the Catholic Ministry office. Together, they watched on TV as the election of the first U.S.-born pope was announced.
“It was electric,” Nelson said, adding there was “uproar” in the room when Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost became the 267th pontiff. “It was so cool to see an American pope.”
Like other members of the Catholic ministry, he is hopeful that Pope Leo XIV will help bring a revival for Catholicism in America.
“I feel that there’s a resurgence of Catholicism today,” said Nelson, who was religiously unaffiliated until last year when he converted to Catholicism. “You see people who are passionate about their faith. There’s a new wave coming, and we’re going to have more converts like me, who are coming from the ‘nones.’”
Across much of the world, the number of people who are nonbelievers or unaffiliated with any organized religion has dramatically increased over the years. The people known as “nones” — atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particular — comprise 30% or more of the adult population in the U.S., according to a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Princeton’s Office of Religious Life says it supports members of the school community “of any religious identity or of none.”
Being a devoted Catholic on a mostly secular campus can be challenging; Swantek says he’s never felt “more needed as a priest.”
He is proud of the tight-knit, welcoming Catholic community that he leads, and how they’ve helped recent converts come into the faith.
News of the first U.S.-born pope was welcomed by Catholics across the ideological spectrum in Pope Leo XIV ’s homeland.
“Something that did bring me a lot of hope is Pope Leo has a missionary background,” said Ace Acuna, a Princeton alumni. He recently attended a Mass at the chapel before beginning a nearly five-week Catholic pilgrimage from Indianapolis to Los Angeles.
“In a world where in some places it might look like faith is on the decline, a church that’s willing to go out to the margins and evangelize and be on mission, that’s going to be so important,” Acuna said.
When he was an undergrad at Princeton, Acuna said the chapel became crucial to his college life.
On his way to class every morning, he’d pass by the chapel for a silent prayer. He’d return for the noon Mass and again at the end of the day for one last prayer.
“Princeton is a very busy place and there’s a lot of noise both externally but also internally because we’re so busy and we’re always worried about the next thing,” he said. “Sometimes you just want silence, and you just want a place where you can lay down your burdens.”
At the close of one recent Mass, David Kim and his girlfriend Savannah Nichols continued to pray near the altar, holding hands, kneeling or prostrating on the floor in a sign of reverence.
Kim, a recent graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary, converted to Catholicism last year and has been serving as an altar server at the Princeton University chapel. He called the chapel’s side altar “an island of Christian life in an unbelieving world.”
Princeton University has always had a vibrant religious community and a religiously diverse one, said Eric Gregory, a professor of religion there.
“In a way it’s either so secular or even post-secular that it’s not threatened by the Christian presence on campus,” he said. “Religious students in our campus are not cloistered from campus. They’re also in sports teams, clubs and the newspaper. They’re integrated.”
Catholics at the the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were elated by his election — and reinvigorated in practicing their faith.
“Being able to live out my faith in this extremely secular campus is such a blessing to me,” said student Daniel Vanisko, a lifelong Catholic, later adding in an email that the pope’s election “really helps me to draw closer to my faith, seeing that someone that grew up in the same state as me, is the successor of Peter in the Church.”
Cavan Morber, a rising junior, said attending UIUC “gives me chance to be challenged in my beliefs, think critically about what I believe, and share my faith with others.”
Asked in an email exchange about the pope’s election, Morber replied: “What a time to be alive!”
“I am hopeful for how he will be able to unite the Church in a time of a lot of division among Catholics and everyone around the world,” Morber added.
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