New Evangelization from the “Existential Peripheries”

This article reports on a study of the effectiveness of Solidarity Experiences Abroad Inc. (SEA), a Canadian Catholic-inspired NGO that organizes service trips to Latin America, for introducing young people coming from a highly secularized culture into a pro-religious one. It finds that exposure to the “existential periphery” of the Latin American believing poor, along with a religiously open host culture, respect for the moral conscience of participants, and the facilitation of open dialogues, creates a significant willingness in participants to become part of SEA’s pro-religious culture at their return into Canada (26%). It is argued that the program is particularly attuned with Pope Francis’s view on the New Evangelization in Evangelii Gaudium.