Why Gen Z converts are flocking to the Latin Mass
Georgina Mumford • November 13, 2025
Like many young converts, my first experience of Catholic worship was through the Traditional Latin Mass. It was grand, puzzling, and at times bewildering. Few besides the lady up front in the mantilla seemed particularly confident about when to stand and when to kneel. And yet the following week – and every Sunday since – I have been drawn back. Not, as some presume, in hopes of stumbling upon the grand robes-and-sandals Christianity beloved by certain Catholic corners of X, but out of a curious desire to experience what Dr Peter Kwasniewski refers to as a “prolonged courtship of the soul”.
Admittedly, the concept of seeking a “prolonged” anything is a novelty to us Zoomers. Born between the late 1990s and early 2010s, we grew up in the heart of the fastest technological expansion in human history. We have little recollection of a world before immediacy, and a tolerance for tedium that is virtually non-existent. How strange, then, that our generation – so severed from stillness – should be quietly filling pews for a 90-minute liturgy performed in an ancient language.
And yet, the numbers speak for themselves. A report released by the Bible Society earlier this year indicated not only that Christianity is making a comeback among British youth, but that those converting to the Catholic faith are leading the charge. Even more compelling is the news that our American cousins saw an extraordinary 71 per cent increase in TLM attendance between 2019 and 2021. One 2024 study notes that this revival has been spearheaded by 22-to-39-year-olds.
Perhaps there is good reason for this. The majority of today’s young converts enter Catholicism not through a friend or family member, but through the visual-first worlds of YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. In a digital landscape dominated by aesthetic aspiration (and a modern world which often abandons it in the name of utility), the curling incense, resplendent altars and haunting chants of the Latin Mass cut through, offering something wholly unapologetic for its own grandeur. Beauty – “the forgotten transcendental”, as French philosopher Étienne Gilson referred to it – is not a by-product of the TLM, but central. The rite recognises that what first delights the eye may, in time, awaken the interior life.
Just as the popularity of the Latin Mass speaks to what young converts long for, it also reveals what they are weary of. Ours is a generation for which almost everything – from hobbies and identities to moral convictions – is packaged, marketed and sold back to us. Even certain forms of spirituality have not escaped this logic. Modern liturgies can, at times, feel overwhelmingly geared towards engagement and accessibility. Churches may feel pressure to offer young seekers a “soft entry” to the faith. But Zoomers have been offered soft entries their entire lives. They understand that what is simplified for ease of digestion rarely has the power to fulfil.
The Latin Mass offers no such accommodations. Rather than “performing” to the congregation, the priest faces eastward – ad orientem – leading them in a shared act of worship. As actor and celebrity convert Shia LaBeouf succinctly put it in a 2022 interview with Bishop Robert Barron: “it feels like they’re not selling me a car.” In other words, far from being alienating for young people, being invited to bear witness rather than to consume is a profound relief.
It is notable that the majority of young converts remain blissfully unaware of any politics surrounding the Latin Mass. For many weeks, I was under the impression that the TLM was simply another way to “do” the Mass – an option available at most parishes. Only later did I learn just how fortunate I was to live near one of just over a hundred UK churches offering the rite. Even now, much of the surrounding debate still feels remote to me. Those in my generational cohort have no memory of a pre-Vatican II Church, no inherited grudges to drag into the pews. We are not nostalgic for something we have never known. Our attraction to the old rite tends to be instinctive, as opposed to ideological. While many cradle Catholics grew up hearing the Latin Mass described as something a little stuffy or outmoded, most converts encounter it without those inherited associations. Thus, the rite of our grandparents’ era feels almost paradoxically fresh.
Above all, Gen Z longs for rootedness – a sense that the British educational system has long failed to offer. With history curriculums streamlined, national myths deconstructed and traditional rites of passage being reshaped around moral campaigns, few young people leave education with a sense of where they came from, let alone what they belong to now. Conversely, the Latin Mass, with its centuries-old rhythm, fixed prayers and a Eucharistic canon that has remained essentially unchanged for over 1,400 years, touches that wound. While the Church is no stranger to internal debates and revisions, the rite itself carries a sense of time-tested weight. The boat might rock from time to time, but for the most part, we rest assured that no one is going to come along and overturn the whole thing. For a generation so used to having the rug pulled, this kind of permanence is a rare gift.
It would be easy to cast zealous pro-TLM Zoomers as interlopers of the “trad” variety; disillusioned young men craving a return to ritual and hierarchy after years of browbeating from the progressive establishment. Certainly, these types exist. But I would hesitate to call them the majority. In my experience, the majority of us young converts drawn to the Latin rite are not fleeing modernity, but hungering for substance. Gen Z has starved so long on a diet of froth and irony that we cannot pause to sip the milk. We want the red meat. Something with the bones still in. In the Latin Mass, we find it.
(Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)