By Peter Rosengren

Samuel Carden, a Bendigo Year 12 student studying for the 2026 VCE, still remembers the shock in some of his family’s voices and the looks on their faces when he told them he would be entering the Catholic Church at Easter this year.

His family, who he describes as lifelong atheists, couldn’t comprehend why their son would do such a thing in a family that had been raised without reference to Christianity or religion.

Samuel’s odyssey of faith is intriguing – and began young. From his teenage years he sensed there was a higher power – not only in his own life, but life in general. Atheism, he said, just didn’t seem to gel. It led him to study other religious faiths and then to explore philosophy before realising the Catholic Church was the answer he had been seeking.

Samuel is just one face of a counter-cultural phenomenon quietly growing across the nation and around the world – more and more people from widely differing backgrounds, many young and male, seeking to enter the Catholic Church.

Those entering the Church fall into one of two categories, Catechumens or Candidates. Catechumens are non-Christians who have never been baptised. Candidates are those who have been baptised in other Christian denominations. With few exceptions, the Catholic Church recognises the validity of baptisms conducted by other Christian denominations.

But if Samuel’s family was surprised, so was Samuel when he learned that, in a rare occasion for the Church in Australia, he and nearly forty others entering the Church in the Diocese of Sandhurst at Easter would be received by none other than Pope Leo XIV’s personal Ambassador to Australia, Archbishop Charles Balvo.

It’s a rare honour for Bendigo. Since the previous Bishop of Sandhurst, Shane Mackinlay was appointed as Archbishop of Brisbane in 2025, the Diocese of Sandhurst has been waiting on Pope Leo to appoint a replacement. Archbishop Balvo stepped into the role this year to welcome new Catholics into the Church in the Diocese of Sandhurst.

Together with Samuel, seven others from the Sacred Heart Cathedral cluster of parishes, which includes St Monica’s in Kangaroo Flat and St Joseph’s at Quarry Hill, were received into the Church by Archbishop Balvo.

They include a FIFO mine worker, a young city lawyer practising family law, a clerical officer and a university student studying finance and hoping to become a financial trader. All finally became Catholics in Sacred Heart Cathedral at the high point of the Church’s year, the Easter Vigil, this year on Saturday, 4 April.

The same picture is being experienced by the Church across Australia and around the globe. The Archdiocese of Melbourne saw nearly 600 Melburnians elect to become Catholics at Easter. The Archdiocese of Sydney, one of three Catholic dioceses in Sydney’s metropolitan area, saw nearly 700 people make the same choice. The numbers are way up on previous years, and the same phenomenon is being noted by Catholic authorities around the globe, including in nations where Christian numbers have been declining for decades.

Starting in 2025, the Bendigo group has journeyed through the Church’s process for those who wish to become Catholics, the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA). Through RCIA meetings, those interested in the Church had the chance to ask all the questions uppermost in their minds about what being a Catholic means in the modern world.

Like their lives, their reasons and personal journeys are all very different and all unique. Yet all share one thing in common:a deep sense of having found an answer to the meaning of their lives that the world cannot satisfy – and a spiritual home.

John Box, a fly-in-fly-out mine worker and father of four, currently working in the Bendigo region, began contemplating entering the RCIA when his wife, Sarah and their children returned to attending Sunday Mass each weekend.

“I thought, ‘I’m just going to find out what this Catholic Church is all about’,” he said, adding, “It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”

Meanwhile, his parents thought his Church attendance was not really serious. “But they’re starting to realise now that it’s not a joke,” he said, with a smile.

Sarah, a cradle Catholic, said she decided to start attending Mass after many years of absence. The couple is homeschooling their children, who previously had attended Catholic schools in Bendigo. Sarah said both had decided to ‘fill in’ the bigger picture for their children on Catholic faith as part of the homeschooling curriculum.

“I sort of woke up one day and thought, ‘I’ve got to get back to Church'," Sarah said. Describing her own journey back to the Church and John’s experience, she said she thinks something is changing in the world.

“I really think God is moving in the world and people are starting to think ‘Oh, maybe there really is something to all of this’.” 

For Kelly Manzie, a clerical officer and mother of two, the feeling that she was being called into the Church was strong. At the same time, she was apprehensive about taking what seemed like such a momentous step.

She had explored a variety of other groups that seemed to offer pathways in life, but sensed deep within herself that they didn’t have the answers she was searching for.

What finally prompted her was the strong feeling that her Guardian Angel was leading her to enquire about becoming a Catholic. The Catholic faith teaches that all humans have Guardian Angels who are charged by God with the duty to protect and assist people in their journey through life.

On that day in August 2025, she drove to the Cathedral. Instead of walking inside she walked around the outside of the building, weighing up what she should do. A week later she finally walked into the Cathedral and enquired about entering the Church. The result? “Things just fell into place,” she said.
The difference, she said, was that “God had never been the centre of my universe until I stepped into the Church.”

Now, she said, she has realised her dream. “I couldn’t wait,” she said. “I became impatient to become a Catholic, but I also knew that God was preparing me for that moment.”

For Samuel Carden, the VCE student from a family of atheists, the journey took years.

“It was a long process, really,” he said. “Despite my upbringing, atheism never really ‘clicked’ with me.”

“That kind of idea doesn’t work in terms of human values. What I had been told about life and religion and what I knew of my own value as a person didn’t add up for me.”

His feelings about a divine presence started very early, around the age of seven. In his teenage years, he started reading as much as he could about religious faiths, progressing on to exploring philosophy as he searched for something he could believe in. But, while engaging, philosophy didn’t seem to provide the truth he was searching for.

“I still felt there was something deeper,” he said.

One day, he came across the word ‘theology’ in his reading and decided to find out what it meant. Akin to philosophy, theology is reasoning about God, divinity and religious beliefs.

“I believed in a higher power, and the ontological arguments for God made sense,” he said. “It all clicked. That’s when I started asking, ‘who is God?’ I thought that if God is self-sufficient, he doesn’t need creation, but he still creates. And that showed me a deep level of care.”

Samuel said the wonder he experiences at the created world shows the presence of a caring God – and something more; “I was impressed not just by a creating God but by the order in everything,” he said.

Furthermore, he had looked into all major religions and concluded that all somehow pointed to Christ.

“Finally, after a year as a Christian in my own head, I thought ‘I have to go to Church',” he said.

He still remembers that experience. “The first time I walked into St Monica’s (in Kangaroo Flat) … and my very first thought was ‘I’m home'.  From that day on, I thought of myself as a Catholic.”

Having started attending Mass but not receiving the Eucharist as he was still unbaptised, Samuel spoke with Fr Brian Boyle, a former Dean of Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, who is now the Diocesan Administrator of the Diocese of Sandhurst. After hearing his story, Fr Brian referred him to Fr Jackson Saunders, and from there he entered the RCIA process.

“I told Dad and Mum, but they didn’t really get it at all,” Samuel said. “They were shocked. They didn’t understand it whatsoever.”

However, above all other factors, there was one key experience that confirmed for Samuel that he was where he needed and wanted to be.

“There was no external force, except for Jesus in the Eucharist,” he said. “That’s the Number One reason I’m Catholic. It’s the Eucharist.”

Asked what the prospect of finally entering the Church this Easter meant to him, he said he had been counting the days.

“I’ was fully convinced it would be the greatest day of my life. I thought I would cry,” he said. But there’s more.

“Now  I’m received into the Church, the next time I go into a Catholic Church, instead of crossing my arms and receiving a blessing when Communion is being distributed, I can receive the Eucharist,” he said.

Deacon Nagle, currently studying finance at university, said his decision to enquire about the Catholic Church came from reading the Bible and, sadly, after the breakup of a relationship.

“I was in a relationship with a girl. I wanted to get closer to God, but she didn’t seem to be interested,” he said. “After reading the Bible, I would try and talk to her about it, but she didn’t seem to like it or be interested, and I knew then the relationship wasn’t going to work,” he said. “On our second anniversary, in July 2025, we broke up.”

“The very next day I moved home with Mum and Dad. Two to three weeks later, I went to a Catholic Church for the first time. There I met someone and told them about my interest in the Church and they introduced me to Fr Jackson.” From there, Deacon finally decided to enter the RCIA process to see where it would lead him.

Father Jackson Saunders, who has accompanied this year’s Catechumens and Candidates throughout the Cathedral parish RCIA process, says he already has sixteen enquiries for next year. “It’s early days, but this level of interest is way up on even last year’s increased figures – and it’s early days yet,” he said.

”I really think people are searching for something they can trust and believe in more than ever,” he said. “So much in the world is happening, and I have no doubt that what we’re seeing - plain and simple – is God at work.”

What has surprised him is the deep questions people have been asking him, and fellow clergy.

“People are not asking questions like whether I really believe God exists,” he said. “They’ve already concluded that God is real, personally present to all of us and loves us.”

“They’re asking, often, deeply complex and nuanced theological questions, and I think this is showing something quite significant about what’s really going on beneath the surface of our society. This is not just a fad.”

The increased number of enquirers in the last couple of years and the increasing numbers already interested in becoming Catholic in 2027 are pushing Church resources as personnel deal with the surge in interest.

“In a sense, we’re struggling to keep up with the interest,” he said. “But,” he added, “if you have to have problems, it’s a good problem to have.”

Cathedral Cluster's newest Catholics after being received into the Church at the Easter Vigil at Sacred Heart Cathedral.

Return to Sandpiper e-News 119 (10 April 2026).