Confession Lines Are Stretching Around the Block Again and It Is Mostly Men Under 35

Walk into the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Nashville on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm and you will see something that did not exist five years ago. The line for confession runs out the door of the chapel, down the side aisle, and around to the narthex. Father Michael Fye told the diocesan paper in March that the parish had to schedule a third priest on Saturdays starting in Lent because two could not keep up. He said the line on Holy Saturday this year hit 47 people at one point. About 70 percent of those waiting, he estimated, were men in their twenties and thirties. Five years ago that figure was around 30 percent.

The pattern is not isolated to Nashville. The Diocese of Arlington reported a 41 percent increase in confessions during Lent 2026 compared to Lent 2024. The Archdiocese of Atlanta added Sunday afternoon confession hours at 14 parishes after demand outpaced Saturday capacity for three straight months. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles are seeing the same pattern. The Pillar, a Catholic news outlet, surveyed 312 priests in late March and found that 78 percent reported "noticeably higher" confession volume in the prior six months, with 64 percent saying men under 35 were the largest growth group.

The numbers fit with broader survey data on religious practice. The Pew Research Center released its 2026 Religious Landscape Study in February, which showed that the share of Catholics under 35 attending Mass weekly has risen from 14 percent in 2014 to 22 percent in 2025. Among men specifically, the rise was from 11 percent to 24 percent. The same survey showed that the percentage of Catholics under 35 who say they go to confession at least once a year has more than doubled, from 17 percent to 38 percent. CARA, the research center at Georgetown, has tracked similar trends in its parish-level data.

What is driving it. Priests interviewed by The Pillar gave overlapping answers. Many cited the "Hallow effect," referring to the Catholic prayer app that crossed 23 million users in March and runs daily examination of conscience prompts that point users toward in-person confession. Others pointed to specific online figures including Bishop Robert Barron of Word on Fire, Father Mike Schmitz whose Bible in a Year podcast has crossed 700 million downloads, and Father Casey Cole of OFM. A few flagged Jordan Peterson's public engagement with Catholic intellectual content as having moved a particular slice of male listeners toward sacramental practice. Father Patrick Briscoe, editor of Our Sunday Visitor, told the magazine that the common thread was "a search for something with structure, weight, and continuity, that does not feel like therapy and does not feel like self help."

The supply side has not kept up. The number of priests in the United States dropped from 58,632 in 1965 to 33,514 in 2024, according to CARA data. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate projects further decline through 2030 before stabilizing as the post-2018 increase in seminary enrollment moves through ordination. Several dioceses have responded by inviting religious order priests, including Dominicans and Franciscans, to staff confession rotations during Lent and Advent. The Archdiocese of Washington has used its Catholic college campuses to provide additional confession coverage during peak weeks.

The phenomenon is not limited to Catholic confession. Eastern Orthodox parishes, which practice individual confession before communion, report similar increases among adult converts and reverts. Mark Bauerlein at the Greek Orthodox cathedral in Atlanta noted in a parish bulletin that the cathedral has seen its largest catechumen class on record this year, with 38 men entering the catechumenate at the start of Lent. Anglican and Lutheran parishes that retained the rite of private confession, including a number of high church Episcopal parishes in the South, are also reporting surges, though from a much smaller base.

For Protestant evangelical churches, the pattern shows up differently. Since most Protestant traditions do not practice formal sacramental confession, the equivalent is small group accountability and private spiritual direction. Lifeway Research's 2026 Discipleship Pathways Study found that the percentage of evangelicals under 35 in regular small group accountability with another believer rose from 18 percent in 2019 to 31 percent in 2025. The director of the study, Scott McConnell, told Christianity Today that "young men in particular are looking for structured, regular, in-person practices of repentance and accountability."

Pope Leo XIV, in his Regina Caeli address from St Peter's Square Sunday, made specific reference to confession as "the gift of beginning again that is offered to the Church in every age." He urged pastors to make the sacrament more available and parishioners to bring friends with them when they come. The pope's general audience this Wednesday at 9am Rome time will continue his catechesis on the sacraments, with confession scheduled for the May 13 audience.

The next benchmark moment for parish confession volume is Pentecost on June 7. Many parishes schedule extended confession hours that week to prepare for the close of the Easter season.