The BYU Catholic Newman Club hosted the first Mass to happen on the BYU campus in years on January 16.
Although only 50-100 people expected to attend, club officers were shocked when hundreds of people showed up, club officer Gabriel Liza said.
Because of the unexpected size of the crowd, many had to sit and stand around the edges of the room.
“I was just overwhelmed with joy and with happiness, seeing a lot of these people just come and learn a little bit more about us," Liza said.
Julie Boerio-Goates was a Catholic BYU faculty member from 1982-2014 and was the Newman Club's faculty coordinator in the late 1990s. During this time the club was able to celebrate Mass weekly on BYU campus.
For various reasons the Masses on BYU campus stopped and the club died out. However, Boerio-Goates says Masses are still held at the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Orem and are popular for students from the World Religions Class to visit for a weekend Mass.
The BYU Newman Club was revived around 2 years ago by its current members.
“Our main focus was providing that home for people that were Catholic at BYU,” Club President Javier Reyes said. “A place for them to worship and come have a community that they can relate to.”
Only about 30 people in attendance at the recent Mass were Catholic. The majority of attendees were not members of the Catholic church.
The club expected a high number of visitors and prepared a pamphlet in advance. It included information on when to stand up, sit down and kneel. It also contained sheet music, explanations for symbolism and readings from the Bible.
“We believe that we gain so much from the LDS church and its members,” Reyes said. “We want to give back, and we want to share our culture.”
The event took months to be approved and organized. Many clubs and organizations were involved in putting the event together, including the Interfaith Student Association and the Office of Civic Engagement.
“I think it’s really important for us — as Latter-day Saints and as human beings — to make room for each other,” Janai Wright, from the Interfaith Student Association Presidency, said. “I think interfaith relations are all about making space for others to be who they are and to worship in the way that they want to worship. We are fortunate that some of our Catholic students have given their peers the gift of participating in their worship.”
One reason many Catholic BYU students wanted to host an on-campus Mass is because many of them do not have cars and cannot make it to Mass on Sundays, Reyes said. Public transportation is very limited on Sundays in Utah and many of them cannot afford to pay for an Uber every week to get to Salt Lake City.
This made having a Catholic Club at BYU even more important to them.
“When I came to campus, I thought I had to hide my religion, finding out that there was a Catholic Club and that there are other people that are Catholic here and that we have the same experiences, it just makes you more spiritual," Liza said. "You have this thing that you thought you had to keep a secret, and now you can actually practice it in a campus where 90% of people or more are part of (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).”
Catholic Club Vice President Fernanda Romero said she has fallen in love with Utah and its culture. There are even things from the Church's faith that she has “holy envy” for. It is important for everyone to talk to and get to know people from other faiths, she said.
“I think it's a lot of creating empathy and showing that we have more things in common than we might think we do,” Romero said. “It could probably build more bridges than destroy them, or just be a peacemaking skill.”