Catholic women religious in India have enhanced their youth ministry, with the aim to bring young people closer to the church and their traditions. “This involves not only working on their faith formation, skills training or academic excellence, but [also] understanding and accepting them as they are with their dreams, weaknesses and strengths,” said Apostolic Carmel Sister Maria Nirmalini, who heads the women’s wing of the Conference of Religious India. Young people in India, she told Global Sisters Report, are losing their trust in an adult-dominated world and migrate to foreign countries in large numbers for freedom and growth, leaving their parents and their Christian heritage. Youth distancing from the church was first studied by the National Youth Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India in 2012, which found that church attendance had dropped during the teen and young adult years: Only 29 percent of youths continued attending church frequently while in college, and 40-50 percent of students in youth groups reportedly struggle in their faith after graduation. “It is high time we recognized this dangerous trend and be with the youth,” said Sister Nirmalini, who led the Conference of Religious India until May. “Youth are not going away from the church, but the church is moving away from them,” added the nun, who has spent decades as an educator. The women religious’ youth ministry received a boost in May at the conference’s triennial national assembly, which voiced concern over Catholic youths’ distancing from the church, as well as their mass migration. (According to the 2023 Indian Student Mobility Report, about 1.3 million students from India went overseas for studies in 2022, and the report’s authors predict that about 2 million students from India will be studying abroad by 2025.)