Beijing relaunches communism, conversions increase in the West

By Roberto de Mattei   |   24 September 2025

The image that the West presents today is that of a secularised and decadent world, devoid of faith and certainties. The enemies of the West establish their ideological and expansionist ambitions on their conviction as to this weakness.

The summit in Beijing on 2 September was not a simple diplomatic meeting but a thoroughly ideological spectacle, in which the Chinese dictator and his vassals, starting with Vladimir Putin, issued a threat to the West in the form of a gigantic military parade. Xi Jinping sported the same gray jacket that Mao Zedong considered a symbol of the Chinese Revolution, and the portraits, slogans, and references to Mao’s thought remind the world that China means to present itself not only as an economic power, but also as a political model alternative to that of the West. Communism, as Xi Jinping’s post-Maoist and Putin’s post-Stalinist versions demonstrate, far from being a relic of the past is today being used as the banner of a new global hegemony. Fr Stefano Caprio recently documented on AsiaNews that during Putin’s twenty-five years in power, 213 new monuments to Stalin have been erected, along with hundreds of commemorative initiatives. “The future will be like the past, and the past was wonderful”, Putin has proclaimed.

So is communism making a comeback while Christianity dies? Not at all.

The most recent data from secularised countries like the United States, France and the United Kingdom show a surprisingly different picture: conversions to Catholicism are growing significantly, so much so that in some cases they mark a genuine reversal of the historical trend.

For the first time since 2000, more people are joining the American Catholic Church than are leaving it. Research conducted by Shane Schaetzel, combining data from the Pew Research Center, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), and Vatican statistics, reveals that the number of adult conversions, which had dropped to 70,000 in 2020, is now rapidly recovering: the projection for 2025 is of almost 160,000 new adult Catholics.

The turnaround is even more significant considering that these are not immigrants who are already Catholic but Americans who are freely choosing to embrace the faith. At the same time, the number of those leaving has plummeted since 2020, allowing for a positive balance for the first time in twenty years. Births are still on the decline (baptisms of newborns have dropped by half since 2000), but the vitality of American Catholicism seems to be getting a boost from adult conversions.

But the French situation is especially striking in its radicality. At Easter 2025 the Catholic Church welcomed 10,384 adult catechumens, an increase of 45% compared with 2024, the highest figure since the French bishops’ conference began collecting statistics. Even more startling is the generational dynamic: the largest group is that of young people between 18 and 25 (42%), who have surpassed the 26–40 age group for the first time.

At the same time, over 7,400 adolescents (11–17 years old) are preparing for baptism, an increase of 33% in one year. Many stories are of adults from non-Christian families or families without any religious tradition at all, and the number of converts from Islam is surprising. Every year, between 300 and 400 Muslims receive Catholic baptism, often at the cost of great personal hardship.

While in 2015 about 3,900 adults were baptised, today that number has nearly tripled, marking growth of 160% in ten years. For secularised France this is a surprising and thought-provoking figure.

The United Kingdom is also seeing an unexpected increase, with young men at the forefront. In the diocese of Westminster alone, 500 adults were received in 2025, half of them unbaptised catechumens: an increase of 25% over the previous year. In Southwark, London’s other major diocese, the numbers have hit a ten-year record, with 450 adults received at Easter. All over the country, testimonies collected indicate a growing presence of young people drawn to the Catholic faith.

A recent study by the Bible Society, entitled “The Quiet Revival”, reports that from 2018 to 2024 church attendance in the UK increased by 55%. Among young people aged 18–24 who regularly take part in worship, 41% say they are Catholic, now surpassing the Anglicans.

These three realities — the American, French, and English — present different features but converge on one point: after decades of decline, Catholicism is once again conquering hearts and minds, especially among young adults. In the Catholic faith they seek the liturgical beauty and doctrinal solidity that our time lacks.

In an age of secularisation and declining religious practice, these new conversions alone do not change the overall numerical picture, but they send a strong signal: Catholicism continues to exert a spiritual, cultural and existential attraction, especially when presented in its traditional form. The era of Leo XIV opens under these auspices.

It should be added that one of the countries with the lowest conversion rates is Russia, where Catholics are no more than one percent. Yet in 1917, at Fatima, Our Lady prophesied precisely the conversion of Russia and the final triumph of her Immaculate Heart, which will not be the triumph of the schismatic Orthodox religion, but the return to that integral Catholic faith which Russia knew at the time of its conversion between the tenth and twelfth centuries, when the state of Kyiv extended from the Baltic and the Black Sea to the Carpathian Mountains, integrated within Western Christendom, under the supreme authority of the Roman pontiff.

Our Lady’s promise is a certainty that comes to us from Heaven, because if God proclaims, God fulfils. The conversions of the West seem to be a foretaste of this promise. The future does not belong to communism, but to the Church of Christ.