Crossroads 4 Christ Leaders Reigniting Faith in Young Adults

Story by Shelley Wolf

Editor’s Note: This month, Crossroads 4 Christ will host its second annual Young Adult Conference from May 17 to 23. With the theme “Into the Deep,” it will include a mix of online speakers and in-person events, such as Holy Hour with Bishop Juan Miguel Betancourt and a Pentecost Vigil Mass with Archbishop Leonard P. Blair. For conference registration and more information, visit: www.c4cconference.org. Who are the young adult leaders behind this event? This story is part of a series based on conversations with each member of the Crossroads 4 Christ National Servant Leadership Team. The first up is Alex Soucy, executive director of Crossroads 4 Christ.

MANCHESTER – In September 2015, Alex Soucy and his friend Travis Moran were a year out of graduate school, missing the days when they were actively involved in campus ministry at Quinnipiac University in Hamden.

“After grad school we moved back to our respective parents homes and started going to our respective parishes, and there was just a void of community of peers,” Soucy says. “It was that desire to have what we had in college, which was friends in the faith who are our age and who are growing in holiness and life together.”

However that month, Soucy says, the two young men had “the amazing opportunity” to travel to Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to hear Pope Francis celebrate Mass during his 2015 papal visit to the United States. “The special graces that were poured out” from that visit, he says, coupled with meeting an animated group of young adults from Boston on the bus sparked an idea.

“On the bus ride back, the two of us just felt inspired by the Holy Spirit and compelled to do something to kind of answer this ache in our hearts that we had for community and to deepen our relationship with Christ,” Soucy says.

“So we decided, ‘Let’s call and text and email a bunch of our friends and invite them to gather on a Thursday night, and we’ll spend an hour talking about our faith and God’s presence in our life. And then we’ll go to church and spend an hour in Eucharistic adoration, encountering our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.’ And that,” he says, “was the first official Crossroads 4 Christ.”

From Small Beginnings to
Young Adult Conference

From that simple idea, Soucy and Moran and those who later joined them, built a nonprofit lay apostolate that is helping other young adults find a Catholic community where they can grow together in their faith. In just six years, Crossroads 4 Christ, also known as C4C, has developed into a thriving young adult ministry with six chapters in three dioceses, spanning the state.

Today, Crossroads 4 Christ is serving young adults through chapters in the Archdiocese of Hartford that meet at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in New Britain, St. Mary Parish at St. Joseph Church in New Haven, and St. John the Evangelist Parish in Watertown. The ministry also serves young adults in the Diocese of Norwich through a chapter in Mystic, and in the Bridgeport Diocese with chapters in Stamford and Fairfield.

This month, Crossroads 4 Christ will host its second annual Young Adult Conference from May 17 to 23. Last year’s conference turnout demonstrated Crossroads 4 Christ’s growing outreach to young Catholics, with more than 1,100 young adults logging on from 46 states and 28 countries.

Who are these young adult leaders who are making it their mission to reach out to other young adults through weekly meetings, conferences and special events?

Currently a group of four, calling themselves the National Servant Leadership Team, includes Alex Soucy, a former Nature Conservancy manager, as executive director; Bonnie Srubas, a former public school teacher, as director of operations; Brad Endres, a former FOCUS missionary, as director of mission advancement; and Katie Purple, a former religious education teacher, as director of formation.

Meanwhile, Moran, who considered a call to the priesthood, married in 2019 and stepped down in 2020 to devote time to his new family. He is now Chairman of the Board and continues to speak at the group’s conferences.

Together, the members of the National Servant Leadership Team work out of an administrative office in a former convent at Assumption Church in Manchester, doing everything from planning conferences and special events, to drafting educational materials for weekly Crossroads 4 Christ chapter meetings, to marketing and fundraising to help grow the Catholic faith and a sense of Catholic community among their peers.

They also support dozens of volunteer leaders who run the weekly meetings that, in turn, serve Connecticut’s young adult Catholics.

C4C’s Alex Soucy:
Bringing the Joy of the Gospel

Alex Soucy is open and earnest in his desire to connect young people to Christ, hoping they will not only deepen their own faith but also share it with others.

“Our mission is to develop communities of young missionary disciples,” he says. The vision, he explains, is to have “young adults reinvigorating the life of the Church.”

At age 30, Soucy is the co-founder and executive director of Crossroads 4 Christ, and as such he looks to the writings of Pope Francis to guide his work.

“Pope Francis’ exhortation to live the Joy of the Gospel and to be missionary disciples, that’s a huge guiding document for us,” Soucy says. “He mentions missionary disciple over 40 or 50 times in that document and really encourages us to be a disciple, to follow Christ, trust him in all things, and through that deep encounter to be sent out on mission, going out and living a life of evangelization sharing the Good News of our faith.”

The Crossroads 4 Christ leadership team has done just that, growing the organization around the state. When Soucy moved to the New Haven area a few years ago, he felt called to start a second chapter. “It was just a deepening conviction and a hunger for giving of ourselves in mission, inspired by the Holy Spirit,” he says. Other chapters followed.

In the spring of 2019, Soucy was one of four people who took a bold step, leaving their full-time jobs to devote themselves to the ministry full-time, with Soucy leaving his work at the Nature Conservancy. “A few of us felt called to consider the possibility of going full-time, just seeing the growing need to really support our chapters and being inspired by the fruit around the state,” he says. “This could be an opportunity for others, regionally, nationally, and so we had a desire to grow.”

All four committed to making fundraising a part of their job, thereby supporting themselves and their ministry. Today the organization is a 501c(3) nonprofit.

In addition to growing and solidifying the lay ministry, Soucy says his greatest satisfaction comes from what transpires in the weekly meetings for young adults. During those weekly gatherings, young people have the opportunity to make new friends and grow in their personal faith. They share their “glory stories” about how God is working in their lives, hear a 10-minute spiritual teaching, break into small discussion groups, and participate in Eucharistic adoration in a church.

“The pinnacle of our night is the second hour, the hour spent with Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament on the altar,” he says. “It’s an hour spent deepening the most important relationship of their life, getting to know the person who fulfills the deepest desires of the human heart.”

Soucy himself has had a lifelong connection to Christ. The product of a Catholic school education, he attended Corpus Christi School in Wethersfield as well as East Catholic High School in Manchester. After getting a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in business administration from Quinnipiac University, he is now learning more about spreading the Catholic faith by studying for a master’s degree in pastoral studies with a concentration in youth and young adult ministry at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell.

Being a young adult comes with its special crosses, Soucy says. It’s a time when people really need to look to Jesus first, then to Catholic friends.

“For those living away from parents for the first time or just out of college, it’s a time that can be really hard, especially with the culture and the challenges when it comes to developing authentic friendship,” he notes. So Crossroads 4 Christ is committed to giving young people “the only relationship that can withstand the test of time, one that they can count on through the ups and downs of every season of life. It also gives them the opportunity to develop Christ-centered friendships with peers.”

Soucy is humbly grateful that Crossroads 4 Christ has been a haven for at least two male participants who found spiritual support through the group and later signed on for the seminary to discern a call to the priesthood. Two female participants are now in convents discerning a call to the religious life. “It’s beautiful to see people embracing their vocations,” he says.

“We also need guys and gals to embrace the vocation of marriage and family life,” Soucy adds, noting that he has seen a number of relationships in the group flower into marriages. “I met Jess through Crossroads 4 Christ,” he says of his wife, “and Travis met Santina through Crossroads 4 Christ. God is just helping young adults to receive their vocation.”

For more information on Crossroads 4 Christ chapters and weekly meetings, visit: crossroadsforchrist.org/chapters.