‘I Am the Living Bread’ — The Eucharistic Congress, Day 1

In the humidity of a midwest July, tens of thousands of Catholics lined up in downtown Indianapolis Wednesday to enter the National Eucharistic Congress, promoted by U.S. Catholic bishops as the centerpiece of a call for the revival of a Church that has faced in recent years the demoralization of a clerical sexual abuse crisis, the disappointment of locked church doors during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the challenge of slashed budgets and closing parishes, coming amid a wave of secularization and institutional disaffiliation.