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Religion: “There are people who come from backgrounds very outside the Christian world” among the newly baptized, explains Bishop Matthieu Rougé
Baptisms of adults and adolescents are on the rise. Guests of 19/20 info, the bishop of the diocese of Nanterre, Matthieu Rougé, and the theologian Jean-François Colosimo try to explain this phenomenon.
(franceinfo)
Baptisms of adults and adolescents are on the rise. Guest of 19/20 info, the bishop of the diocese of Nanterre, Matthieu Rougé, and the theologian Jean-François Colosimo try to explain this phenomenon.
This Easter weekend, Matthieu Rougé, bishop of the diocese of Nanterre, is delighted on the 19/20 info set about the increase in baptisms of adults and adolescents. But “we must not force things. We are in a very difficult period of secularization. (…) I think there are at least two reasons. On the one hand, there is the postponement of baptisms of adults who, twenty or thirty years ago, would have been baptized in childhood. And then (…), there are people who come from backgrounds very, very outside the Christian world, from other religious traditions or atheism, he testifies. The current period, which is “difficult“and full of “transformations, questions”, leads some to faith, according to him.
A “very impressive” revival, judge Jean-François Colosimo
Jean-François Colosimo, theologian, judges this increase “very interesting[e]”. After a phase of decline in “the sociological Church”people who ask for baptism now do so “consciously”. “I think that from this point of view too, from the point of view of the quality of the testimony, it is still very impressive.”
