It was the opening night of a three-day Steubenville Youth Conference sponsored by Franciscan University here. Twenty more like it have been taking place here and across North America throughout this summer, drawing a cumulative 50,000 teenagers.

Many teenagers ride 12 or more hours by bus to the Friday-through-Sunday gatherings, which have become a rite of passage for many young American Catholics over the past four decades.

A Steubenville Youth Conference is “unlike any other environment,” said Alex Grob, 18, of St Catherine of Sweden Church in Hampton, who was attending for the second time. “As a teenager, it’s hard to find an environment like this, when you’re with so many kids who are trying to celebrate and live out their faith.”

Added Zach Probst, 17, also of St Catherine, who was attending the mid-July conference to cap off a weeklong leadership training at Franciscan University, “I couldn’t even describe it, the change I went through.” Attending just days after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the land, he added, “I felt the Church is losing a lot of battles. But after this week, I know there are youth who are going to be strong in the Church. I hope I will be one.”

The influence of such conferences is widely felt. At least one in ten newly ordained American Catholic priests has gone through a Franciscan University youth conference as a teenager, as have one in five new nuns, according to recent studies by Georgetown University’s Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

So have many lay leaders in the Church. Franciscan University, half of whose students attend a summer youth conference, counts about 700 lay alumni as currently working in full-time Church jobs, not including another 400 ordained priests.

At the closing Mass of each youth conference, teens are invited to come forward if they’re considering a future in the priesthood or a religious order.

Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, who celebrated the closing Mass at a Steubenville gathering earlier this summer, was surprised at the large response.

“There were several hundred young people who came forward,” he said. “Not that all of these people are eventually going to become priests and sisters, but at least they’re taking their faith seriously enough that it was an option.”

Such speakers at the recent July weekend included the Rev Leo Patalinghug, an accomplished chef who has become a media presence with his “Grace Before Meals” movement that seeks to promote family togetherness around the dinner table. He led the teens in an examination of conscience before a scheduled time in which dozens of priests would be hearing confessions. Mixing in recent pop-culture allusions to Twilight and The Lord of the Rings, he had the teens reflecting on sins ranging from dishonouring parents to dabbling in the occult to indulging in pornography.

“You find saints in the confessional because in confession, you admit the truth: ‘I ain’t a saint, but I want to be one,’” said Fr Patalinghug.

Several teens interviewed in July said a highlight of the youth conferences is the Saturday night time of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, in which a priest carries the consecrated host through the darkened arena, and teens raise their hands in sometimes-tearful prayer and praise. Franciscan has also long been associated with the Catholic charismatic movement, which blends Catholic piety with exuberant, Pentecostal-like worship.

Sam Rocha, an academic and blogger who graduated from Franciscan and played guitar at some of its conferences about 15 years ago, said he has mixed feelings about the high-energy conference experience which can “go into a sentimentalism that, if not properly understood or discerned, can lead people in many cases to a more stranded spirituality after the feelings wear off,” Mr Rocha said. “I’m almost speaking autobiographically. Nonetheless, I think there’s grace, and that can intervene. -- Post Gazette