The “Youth Group” provides a meeting place for youngsters in the Catholic parish of St. Mary’s at Loughborough, an English town of some 50,000 inhabitants in the Midlands. Here two groups meet together every Sunday evening: one of teenagers, formed of fifteen girls and boys over the age of eleven, and the other of twenty boys and girls aged between eight and eleven. They come from the three Catholic parishes of the area. “I grew up together with the group, from participant to leader. Here I met my dearest friends. Now that I lead it I need to be better organized, prepare activities that everyone likes”, explains Anna, who leads the Catholic youth club of Loughborough together with Siobhan . “At times it involves a little work, but I gladly do it because I am convinced that it is the Lord who is asking me”, continues Anna. Aged respectively 18 and 22, the two girls are heavily involved with university and school. Some mothers help them with the organizational aspect. Games, painting, handicrafts and fashion shows are some of the activities proposed. When the youth club reaches its last meeting before the summer break, they all go one evening to the cinema and to the park. Each meeting ends with a prayer, prepared by one of the participants. “It’s extraordinary to listen to a fifteen-year-old girl expressing her own faith – explains Siobhan -; you realise what a close relation with God can do”. “Youth clubs are frequent in England and Wales but they are not present in every parish”, explains Zoe Tolman, in charge of the youth department of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. “The dioceses she continues are left the greatest freedom to organise their own events for youth. Some do a lot, others less. Young people themselves change from parish to parish. In some they are very traditional, in others they seek different forms of spirituality”. “I think that the consciousness that the Catholic Church has of the youth world is changing – explains Ray Mooney, head of the youth office of the diocese of Arundel and Brighton, in southern England -. The Church is realising that not many young people participate in the life of the Church and must use a different approach if it wants to bring them on board. Patience is very important: you need to give them time to come round and understand that the thing they often have a need for is a friend or travelling companion”.
