Salt Lake City, Utah, Jan 3, 2025 / 19:35 pm

Next year’s SEEK Conference is scheduled to be held in Denver; Columbus, Ohio; and Fort Worth, Texas, the annual Catholic event announced this week.

Denver is the headquarters of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), which runs the yearly event, while the Fort Worth location may draw students from Texas A&M, the University of Dallas, and beyond.

The Columbus location, meanwhile, is near Franciscan University of Steubenville. Columbus Bishop Earl Fernandes on Friday shared his excitement at the announcement of the new location. 

“People will see that the Church is young and alive! It will be a tremendous opportunity for our young people to encounter Christ and other young people from around the country,” Fernandes continued.

“It is another sign of the commitment of the Diocese of Columbus to college students, young adults, and their families. Together we will proclaim the joy of the Gospel!”

2025 conference breaks records

SEEK25, which has been held in both Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C., this year, brought a record-breaking 21,115 attendees hailing from all over the United States and Canada. Hundreds of priests attended, with a total of 617 at both locations.

This year’s SEEK featured a “holy competition” between Texas A&M and the University of Nebraska regarding which university could send more students, with the University of Nebraska winning the competition with about 390 attendees.

On Thursday Catholic priest and podcaster Father Mike Schmitz gave a keynote address in which the popular priest spoke on original sin, vice and virtue, and God’s love.

“Every sin is an attempt to be happy apart from God,” he said, referencing Adam and Eve’s first sin in the Garden of Eden.

Schmitz also discussed virtue and vice, noting that we can’t escape the consequences of our choices.

“We get what we’ve chosen,” he noted. “We become what we repeatedly choose.”

Schmitz in his talk noted that “God is infinite attention” and that he “doesn’t take us in line.”

“Everything you do matters to him,” he said. “It’s the cost of being loved — that everything you do matters.”

Friday morning began with a reverent Mass. Held in the Salt Palace Convention Center in downtown Salt Lake City, the space was given a reverent atmosphere through Catholic music as well as screens with images of the local Catholic Cathedral of the Madeleine.

Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, said he was “struck by the reverence” of the Masses at SEEK.

“It seems that every year, the celebration of the liturgy becomes more beautiful and more transcendent,” Conley told CNA.

“It’s hard to have 20,000 college students in a big, huge hotel space to create a sacred environment,” he said. “With the backdrops of the beautiful cathedral here in Salt Lake City, the music, particularly, and all the priests and the religious sisters and the bishops — it just tells me that young people are really looking for the transcendent.”

On Friday night, attendees will gather in Eucharistic adoration — the culmination of the week — at three different locations.

“Our Lord is ever-present at SEEK this year and it’s incredible that we have three simultaneously,” Curtis Martin, founder of FOCUS, said in a press release.

“The personal transformations happening are palpable,” Martin said. “SEEK was founded upon a desire to bring people of faith from all walks of life together, to reinvigorate their love for Christ and their zeal to spread the Gospel.”

“Especially during a time where so much of the world needs the merciful love that our Church has to offer, we have hope in the future of Catholicism and the role that SEEK will continue to play in the vibrant life of our Church,” he continued.

Event features breakout sessions, Mass, fellowship

The atmosphere at SEEK is reverent and prayerful, but it is also lively and energetic. One young attendee wore a cheese hat on Friday. When asked why, he explained simply: “Because we’re from Wisconsin.”

Friday’s breakout sessions featured a range of speakers and topics, including a talk by Crookston, Minnesota, Bishop Andrew Cozzens on “Why Discipleship Fails Without the Fire of the Holy Spirit,” while writer Noelle Mering spoke on combatting “woke” ideology.

In addition to daily talks, Mass, and prayer, people gathered and chatted in the Mission Way — a large section of booths manned by representatives of Catholic apostolates, colleges, and religious orders.

Some booths get creative with their outreach. One group advertising a new St. Maximilian Kolbe film, “Trump of the Heart,” hosted a daily planking competition, the “Kolbe Challenge.”

The Fraternity Poor of Jesus Christ, a group based in Brazil, displayed dolls dressed in handmade religious habits. Members of the order made several of the unique dolls to give to families with young children back in Brazil.

Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary in North Dakota, and Sister Miriam James Heidland of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) were set to give the keynote session Friday night, which will be livestreamed by EWTN.