“Awake, O sleeper, and the light of Christ will shine on you.” — Ephesians 5:14

Amid the stir caused by Rosalía with her new album Lux, the film Los domingos, and the music of Hakuna, an unexpected phenomenon is being perceived in Spain: a spiritual rebirth, free of moralizing and tinged with art, which returns the sacred to the center of contemporary culture.

A spiritual shift in the air

In just one week, I’ve heard not-very-religious friends talk about a phenomenon that seemed unthinkable not long ago: a perceptible spiritual shift in Spain, driven by unusual actors in this context—a successful singer, a film, and a musical group. Even El País has echoed this shift in several articles. In his All Souls’ Day sermon, a parish priest I know mentioned it with astonishment: in twenty-five years of ministry, he had never perceived such an opening or such a wide window of opportunity for the Church in Spanish society.

Rosalía’s Rosary and the Lux stir

With the cover and content of her new album Lux, the Catalan singer Rosalía has sparked a profound religious and cultural stir. On the cover—the album was released on November 7—she appears dressed as a nun, directly evoking classical religious imagery, and has worn rosaries as a stylistic accessory—she was even seen with one during her recent stroll through London.

Pop and faith: the resurgence of a sensibility

Some media outlets are already talking about ‘nun-mania’ or ‘nun-mania’: an unexpected interest in convent aesthetics. Paradoxically, while many convents are closing or being transformed into nursing homes, vocations are growing among young people who prefer cloistered life to the superficiality of the modern world. Rosalía doesn’t present herself as a believer nor does she intend to evangelize, but her work unites the sacred and pop aesthetics. She uses religious symbols as a means to express redemption, identity, and inner searching. The film Sundays, partly shot in the Church of the Redeemer of the Trinitarians in Algorta, sensitively reflects the difficult process of a young Basque woman’s contemporary vocation to the nunhood and the expected resistance and sometimes stormy debate that arises within her family and circle of friends.

A background wave: from disenchantment to the search

We live in times of anxiety, hyperconnectivity, and, at the same time, loneliness. A liquid world, without solid certainties, where everything flows dizzyingly and nothing remains except change itself. Spirituality offers an antidote: slow rhythm, silence, community, gratitude, surrender. After decades of postmodernity and disaffection, many young people are reopening the spiritual imagination. As a friend says: ‘It’s not about following preachers, but about living love, hope, and service to others.’ Young people meet, sing, and organize projects in disadvantaged neighborhoods and countries. And older people, also self-harmed or marginalized by the malpractices of the ideology of the omnipotent self or weary of materialistic and hedonistic consumerism, seek healing and a rediscovery of themselves.

The example of the Emmaus retreats is eloquent: human testimonies, sometimes heartbreaking, listening, reconciliation, and fraternal welcome produce an astonishing multiplying effect of new conversions

As another friend, an experienced priest, says: our generation had a more distant attitude toward Catholicism, partly due to a rebellious spirit against the imposed education we received. Also for political reasons, given the existing leftist paradigm. But all this is changing: today young people have a more open attitude toward the mystery of the Incarnate Word, which they do not know. They are surely influenced by the tensions and difficulties of a life in which it is hard to make one’s way and solid support is sought. When they discover that they are loved by a personal God, a transformation takes place in them that is striking for its joy.

Art and spirituality: the beauty that awakens

This new wave is expressed on many fronts: fashion with a sacred aesthetic (Rosalía, Jacquemus, Balenciaga); cinema that deals with religion without the usual stale irony and with affection (Los domingos, The Chosen, Poor Things, or religious production companies like Ángel or Goya); pop music with mystical connotations (Lux, Hakuna, Aurora, Hozier, Lana Del Rey); philosophers like the Korean Byung-Chul Han, analyst of the “society of fatigue” who reflects on the necessary presence of the divine in this saturated capitalist world on the verge of implosion, who identifies as Catholic and was recently awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.

A question is reopened: why does religion move us even when we don’t believe?

A Church in metamorphosis

We could be entering a new phase: for the oldest institution in the world. Logically, this possible evolution convinces some and not others: Luis Argüello, archbishop and president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, has said that it offers an “opportunity to revitalize young people’s interest in spirituality.” It is clear that the Church (as an institution) should take advantage of this trend and channel it properly, which would imply profound change and reflection. There is no greater force for any organization than the youth movement.

Surveys are showing internationally that Generation Z, those between 13 and 28 years old, is partly returning to the faith. Their parents’ generation was among the most skeptical; it is even indicated that, in the so-called West, the most agnostic or atheist generation was the one before them, meaning that there is now an intermediate situation. We will have to see if this evolution takes hold in the future or is just passing

From a very different perspective, I just heard an elderly theologian comment that after the prophecy of a century of darkness made to Leo XIII, the great Reset of the Word is taking place with Leo XIV. On the other hand, other traditional Catholics see it as an irreverent trivialization, a dilution of the faith, or a mere fad with little substance or truth.

However, the boldest proponents of this process already envision in the near future: monasteries transformed into spiritual laboratories, spaces of silence, art, prayer, and dialogue open to non-believers and other faiths; welcoming parishes where faith is lived in fraternity and beauty with nights of adoration accompanied by sacred electronic music…

At the opposite extreme, for old-school anticlericals, this process would reopen old wounds and the fear of a return to so-called national Catholicism

In any case, if this trend is confirmed, we could be witnessing a new Christian springtime: more contemplative than ideological, more poetic than moralistic, more vulnerable than powerful. Not a massive return of the faithful to churches, but the genesis of vibrant micro-communities, the pusillus grex—’little flock’—of which Saint Paul and Benedict XVI spoke.

In conclusion

We live in times of anxiety and loneliness. Spirituality offers an antidote: slow rhythm, silence, community, and gratitude. Rosalía, Los domingos, Hakuna, and so many other phenomena express the yearning of a generation that, without renouncing modernity, seeks a new way of experiencing the transcendent.

Religion hasn’t returned: it never truly left. It was simply awaiting a new language.

Perhaps the future of Christianity is not to conquer the world, but to rekindle the heart of the world.