Father Mike Schmitz: Campus ministry is ‘best of both worlds’

CNA Staff, Aug 10, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

While many know him best for his popular “Bible in a Year” podcast, Ascension videos, and inspiring talks he gives across the country, Father Mike Schmitz is first and foremost the chaplain at the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD). 

This fall Schmitz will mark his 21st year working in campus ministry, which he called “the best of both worlds” in a recent sit-down interview with CNA in Vail, Colorado, during his Parables Tour. The tour is part of Schmitz’s Seeds of Faith Campaign, which is raising funds for a new Newman Center to be built on the UMD campus.

The 50-year-old priest explained that while he has loved working in both parish and campus settings, each is unique. While college kids can tend to be “fickle” in their faith, he said, they also have a beautiful openness to change that he didn’t experience at a parish.

“College ministry is unique because you have this openness … It is that place where so many people are asking the big questions in life and we just see so many conversions happening when we’re there,” he said.

The Newman Center at UMD has seen a flourishing of vocations. According to Bulldog Catholic, the name of the university’s campus ministry, 400 couples have gone through marriage preparation classes, eight women have entered religious life, and over 16 men have entered seminary, with seven ordained as priests.

“One of my favorite things to do is marriage prep; it just really brings me so much life,” Schmitz said. “I just love even being able to present to couples who are discerning marriage like, no you’re actually discerning how God is asking you, calling you, to be his disciple in your life. That’s the big question. That’s one of the reasons why we get married in churches is because this is a sacrament of discipleship.”

As for those who have discerned religious life, Schmitz called it “a great grace” to walk with these individuals in their vocations.

He highlighted the alarming statistic of nearly 85% of Catholic young adults falling away from the Church while in college and emphasized that at UMD “we want to put a stop to that. So I love being able to even do our little part in Duluth to help that.”

He also pointed out the hope he believes Pope Leo XIV’s papacy could bring to young Catholics.

“I think something about Pope Leo coming from America … I think what it does is, or can do, is it can once again make it real in the sense of bringing it closer to my own home and closer to my life of saying, ‘The pope isn’t just some person from far far off, but Chicago, and here’s the picture of him at the White Sox game.’ And you’re like, ‘Oh, OK. So, God is closer than we think.’”

He added: “[T]here’s been this resurgence in people asking the question, ‘How do we become Catholic?’ Why? Because, I don’t know, maybe something as simple as that — that having a pope who came from this country reminds us that God is closer than we think.”

Advice for others in campus ministry 

For others working in campus ministry, Schmitz gave three suggestions to grow involvement: Offer daily Mass and confession, start engaging Bible studies, and host retreats often.

He emphasized that these events in which people are brought together, such as Bible studies and retreats, help grow involvement because “as Catholics we worship in rows, but we grow in circles.”

Adding to this idea of growing in circles, Schmitz said individuals “need to actually walk with people — not just kind of anonymously go to Mass, anonymously pray at Mass, anonymously leave, but to be able to also say, ‘There’s someone here who knows me.’ And so we need to do small groups.”

Lastly, he urged the need for retreats because “the world is so loud that we need the opportunity for students to be able to just leave, even for a weekend, encounter the Lord in a way that again he’s real, he’s good, he does have a plan for their lives, so that then they can come back to the world [and] go back to campus with that.”

As for what he hopes the students at UMD take away from their time at the Newman Center, he explained that it’s not just about accompanying the students through college so that they become “slightly more devout or pious … no, we’re here to prepare you to be martyrs. And what I mean by that is to be witnesses to your faith in every situation, in every season, wherever you’re called, no matter what it costs.”

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/265859/father-mike-schmitz-says-college-campus-ministry-is-best-of-both-worlds