In 1943, a Croatian fugitive from the Nazis, the Jesuit priest Tomas Poglajen, turned up in Bratislava, adopted a nom de guerre, and began teaching in the city’s Catholic university. An expert in Soviet thought, Father Kolakovic, as he was then called, warned his students that after the Germans lost the war, they would be ruled by the Soviets—and that meant persecution of the church.
Over the skepticism of some Slovak bishops, the priest founded groups to train young Catholics in the arts of resistance. Though he was expelled from Slovakia in 1946—and everything Father Kolakovic predicted came true after the 1948 Communist takeover—the underground church there survived over four decades of relentless attacks by the state, thanks in large part to those informal training schools the prophetic priest founded.
There is something of Father Kolakovic’s spirit in the Areté Academy, a week-long seminar retreat for young Christian leaders who have a calling to work in the public square. It is administered by ADF International, a Vienna-based branch of Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF, which defends religious liberty, also holds yearly Areté Academies in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and—in 2025 for the first time—the British Commonwealth. Though European Christians in 2024 face very different circumstances than Soviet-bloc Christians at the start of the Cold War, there is nevertheless a growing sense among believers that their lives will become more challenging as the Christian faith continues to decline in Europe and throughout the West.
Caught between the vise of aggressive secularism and militant Islam—which sometimes collaborate in politics, in a phenomenon called Islamo-gauchisme by the French—European Christians today desperately need to learn how to live out their faith under fire. To be sure, Areté Academy is not about building an underground church network, but it does both raise the consciousness of young adult Christians about the times in which they live, and it gives them the knowledge and the skills to thrive amid adversity.
ADF held this year’s European Areté Academy (the word is Greek for “excellence”) this past spring at a hotel in a Bratislava suburb. The Areté Academy program has a competitive admissions process that takes promising young professionals (mostly in their twenties to mid-thirties) from each particular region; this year’s European class hail from Europe, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Though a plurality of this year’s “delegates,” as ADF calls them, came from the world of law, many others came from a variety of fields, including medicine, consulting, journalism, and NGO work.
In the four months leading up to their meeting, Areté Academy delegates begin their training with bi-weekly online sessions. Then, gathering in person in an atmosphere of ecumenical Christian prayer and fellowship—among the attendees are Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox—delegates spend five days learning about the philosophical foundations of post-Christian society (critical theory, for example), various issues of law and policy affecting Christianity and Christian concerns (religious liberty, abortion, gender ideology), understanding media, and other topics.
Sophia Kuby, ADF International’s director of strategic relations and training, oversees the Areté Academy program. She says ADF chooses delegates from among “Christians who want to serve in strategic positions of societal impact.”
That is to say, ADF wants the Areté delegates to know how to defend the faith and its practice, but not merely to be defensive. Rather, they operate from a concept promoted by Pope Benedict XVI: that Christians in post-Christian Europe should endeavor to be “creative minorities.”
“We are building an ecosystem of Christian leaders who do not only survive, but also thrive in our cultural moment, which is one of great transition and change,” Kuby says.
Areté chooses as its delegates those who have a long-term vision for systemic reform—not just for the sake of Christians, but for the common good.
“We don’t need more skirmishes,” Kuby says. “We need visionary, fearless, and strategic minds who are determined and capable of advancing the good for all in our fractious, brittle societies.”
Areté Academy is, for many delegates, the first time they will have received an in-depth analysis of the most pressing issues facing Christians in contemporary culture, paired with frequent reminders of God’s active presence. The secret, Kuby adds, is learning how to hold together several things in tension—especially learning how to see the world and all its dangers and darkness without losing the light of hope, and joy.
“Our world—and sadly, often our churches—offer us an environment where it is difficult to cultivate hope and joy once we start to understand the depth of the cultural challenges we are facing across the globe,” Kuby says. “Areté Academy wants to do precisely the opposite: rather than being in an environment where hope is difficult to cultivate, we want to create one where cynicism and despair are difficult to cultivate.”
Indeed, as a middle-aged Christian prone to doomerism and to frustration with fellow Christians who maintain their optimism by choosing not to see real-world threats to the faith (some of the Slovak bishops who tut-tutted Kolakovic were like that), it was striking to see how cheerful the Areté delegates were.
“It is so inspiring to meet fearless and hopeful Christian professionals who stand their ground in a hostile environment,” says Sarah Kulifai, a Hungarian journalist and Areté delegate. “And it is so encouraging to meet so many other young people who don’t consider comfort and wealth to be their main goal in life. It really helped me to see a better future, and to know that I can have a role in building it.”
Similarly, Kasia Lachman, a social media strategist from Poland, says that she discovered at Areté a sense of strength from being around fellow Gen Z Christians who see the world in a similar way, and who are not satisfied to sit quietly on the sidelines while society falls apart. She recalls a Christian strategy that goes like this: Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. See God multiply it.
“I have met at least thirty people at Areté that have been living by this strategy,” Lachman says. “Sometimes it might feel like we are here alone in this world, with the big dreams that God has put in our hearts. And sometimes we doubt ourselves because we tend to forget we belong to each other. Arete reminds us that there is a big strength in community. Each of us needs other people around that will support our mission and mentor us when we need it the most.”
Lachman adds: “This collective spirit embodies the essence of Areté Academy, where we don’t just adapt to change—we thrive in it.”
ADF’s Kuby tells me that this is a discouraging moment for European Christians, but also one that opens doors for those with courage and vision—and with a burning desire not to be passive in the face of the crisis.
“Views that were deemed normal fifteen years ago can be seriously career limiting today,” she says. “But there are also many new opportunities arising: unusual allies getting together on topics, new political movements and parties that are forming, a new self-assurance of the part of society that doesn’t want to tacitly go along with the destructive tendencies of our culture.
“We see change and movement in all sorts of direction; the situation is far from stagnating,” she continues. “The main challenge is this: what kind of people will Christians be in this moment of change? Will we be prepared and able to shape this moment or will we be bystanders watching the inevitable decay as if our mission was nothing but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?”
Kuby and the ADF organizers are well aware that the friendships and networks that Areté delegates form over the week are as important to their future as the content of their class lectures and seminars.
Areté graduates, she explains, “have direct access to incredible intellectual and other resources around the world through this network. The idea is that as people move through their careers, they will be connected to their peers with whom they have a very high level of trust. They will know that everyone in the network has gone through the same training and is solid.”
Attendees at this spring’s National Conservatism conference in Brussels had a real-time lesson of the value of ADF, and the networks it can rely on, when district mayors repeatedly ordered the police to shut down the NatCon conference. ADF’s lawyers on the scene leaped into action to defend NatCon, successfully arguing in an emergency hearing before Belgium’s high court that NatCon had a right to free speech and freedom of assembly. If not for ADF’s presence, its legal skill, and its contacts within conservative networks, the outcome would likely have been disastrous for the Right.
“This shows the beauty of the alliance,” says Kuby. “The right people in the right place with the right connections can tangibly—and quickly, for that matter—effect change for the better.”
The Brussels crisis also revealed why it is important for Christians and conservatives to prepare themselves in advance for these kinds of situations. In pre-communist Slovakia, Father Kolakovic had to battle against the complacency of many Catholic bishops, who refused to see the threat of the gathering storm. The reason Kolakovic’s followers were able to react to communist persecution so effectively is because they had prepared themselves, both spiritually and tactically, for that test.
“It’s that same idea, the same vision,” says Kuby. “You don’t make up your conviction in the moment. You need the convictions in place before the storm hits. Areté Academy is centered around this.”
ADF International developed the Areté Academy by taking best practices from ADF training programs in the United States, and adapting them for regional challenges and realities in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The truly global aspect of Areté training and networking are particular strengths in these times, Kuby believes, because engaged Christians need to learn from and support each other cross-culturally.
“The trends and challenges we face don’t stop at the border,” she says. “And the solutions and responses we need to find and articulate cannot be with a national perspective only, because it is simply not the reality of our world.”
Back home in Hungary, Areté delegate and Catholic pro-life activist Sári Pontifex e-mailed to say how dazzled she was by the intellectual formation and practical training she received at the Academy, as well as the friendships she made with Christians of her generation, who share her commitment to the faith, and to making a difference in public life. Said Pontifex, “Areté Academy was truly the best event I have ever been to.”
ADF International is now receiving applications for Areté Academy Europe 2025, which will be held in Vienna from March 30 to April 4. The application deadline is August 15, 2024. For more information, see https://adfinternational.org/arete/
Areté Academy: Training Christians for an Age of Struggle
Sophia Kuby, ADF International’s director of strategic relations and training / Photo courtesy of ADF International
In 1943, a Croatian fugitive from the Nazis, the Jesuit priest Tomas Poglajen, turned up in Bratislava, adopted a nom de guerre, and began teaching in the city’s Catholic university. An expert in Soviet thought, Father Kolakovic, as he was then called, warned his students that after the Germans lost the war, they would be ruled by the Soviets—and that meant persecution of the church.
Over the skepticism of some Slovak bishops, the priest founded groups to train young Catholics in the arts of resistance. Though he was expelled from Slovakia in 1946—and everything Father Kolakovic predicted came true after the 1948 Communist takeover—the underground church there survived over four decades of relentless attacks by the state, thanks in large part to those informal training schools the prophetic priest founded.
There is something of Father Kolakovic’s spirit in the Areté Academy, a week-long seminar retreat for young Christian leaders who have a calling to work in the public square. It is administered by ADF International, a Vienna-based branch of Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF, which defends religious liberty, also holds yearly Areté Academies in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and—in 2025 for the first time—the British Commonwealth. Though European Christians in 2024 face very different circumstances than Soviet-bloc Christians at the start of the Cold War, there is nevertheless a growing sense among believers that their lives will become more challenging as the Christian faith continues to decline in Europe and throughout the West.
Caught between the vise of aggressive secularism and militant Islam—which sometimes collaborate in politics, in a phenomenon called Islamo-gauchisme by the French—European Christians today desperately need to learn how to live out their faith under fire. To be sure, Areté Academy is not about building an underground church network, but it does both raise the consciousness of young adult Christians about the times in which they live, and it gives them the knowledge and the skills to thrive amid adversity.
ADF held this year’s European Areté Academy (the word is Greek for “excellence”) this past spring at a hotel in a Bratislava suburb. The Areté Academy program has a competitive admissions process that takes promising young professionals (mostly in their twenties to mid-thirties) from each particular region; this year’s European class hail from Europe, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Though a plurality of this year’s “delegates,” as ADF calls them, came from the world of law, many others came from a variety of fields, including medicine, consulting, journalism, and NGO work.
In the four months leading up to their meeting, Areté Academy delegates begin their training with bi-weekly online sessions. Then, gathering in person in an atmosphere of ecumenical Christian prayer and fellowship—among the attendees are Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox—delegates spend five days learning about the philosophical foundations of post-Christian society (critical theory, for example), various issues of law and policy affecting Christianity and Christian concerns (religious liberty, abortion, gender ideology), understanding media, and other topics.
Sophia Kuby, ADF International’s director of strategic relations and training, oversees the Areté Academy program. She says ADF chooses delegates from among “Christians who want to serve in strategic positions of societal impact.”
That is to say, ADF wants the Areté delegates to know how to defend the faith and its practice, but not merely to be defensive. Rather, they operate from a concept promoted by Pope Benedict XVI: that Christians in post-Christian Europe should endeavor to be “creative minorities.”
“We are building an ecosystem of Christian leaders who do not only survive, but also thrive in our cultural moment, which is one of great transition and change,” Kuby says.
Areté chooses as its delegates those who have a long-term vision for systemic reform—not just for the sake of Christians, but for the common good.
“We don’t need more skirmishes,” Kuby says. “We need visionary, fearless, and strategic minds who are determined and capable of advancing the good for all in our fractious, brittle societies.”
Areté Academy is, for many delegates, the first time they will have received an in-depth analysis of the most pressing issues facing Christians in contemporary culture, paired with frequent reminders of God’s active presence. The secret, Kuby adds, is learning how to hold together several things in tension—especially learning how to see the world and all its dangers and darkness without losing the light of hope, and joy.
“Our world—and sadly, often our churches—offer us an environment where it is difficult to cultivate hope and joy once we start to understand the depth of the cultural challenges we are facing across the globe,” Kuby says. “Areté Academy wants to do precisely the opposite: rather than being in an environment where hope is difficult to cultivate, we want to create one where cynicism and despair are difficult to cultivate.”
Indeed, as a middle-aged Christian prone to doomerism and to frustration with fellow Christians who maintain their optimism by choosing not to see real-world threats to the faith (some of the Slovak bishops who tut-tutted Kolakovic were like that), it was striking to see how cheerful the Areté delegates were.
“It is so inspiring to meet fearless and hopeful Christian professionals who stand their ground in a hostile environment,” says Sarah Kulifai, a Hungarian journalist and Areté delegate. “And it is so encouraging to meet so many other young people who don’t consider comfort and wealth to be their main goal in life. It really helped me to see a better future, and to know that I can have a role in building it.”
Similarly, Kasia Lachman, a social media strategist from Poland, says that she discovered at Areté a sense of strength from being around fellow Gen Z Christians who see the world in a similar way, and who are not satisfied to sit quietly on the sidelines while society falls apart. She recalls a Christian strategy that goes like this: Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. See God multiply it.
“I have met at least thirty people at Areté that have been living by this strategy,” Lachman says. “Sometimes it might feel like we are here alone in this world, with the big dreams that God has put in our hearts. And sometimes we doubt ourselves because we tend to forget we belong to each other. Arete reminds us that there is a big strength in community. Each of us needs other people around that will support our mission and mentor us when we need it the most.”
Lachman adds: “This collective spirit embodies the essence of Areté Academy, where we don’t just adapt to change—we thrive in it.”
ADF’s Kuby tells me that this is a discouraging moment for European Christians, but also one that opens doors for those with courage and vision—and with a burning desire not to be passive in the face of the crisis.
“Views that were deemed normal fifteen years ago can be seriously career limiting today,” she says. “But there are also many new opportunities arising: unusual allies getting together on topics, new political movements and parties that are forming, a new self-assurance of the part of society that doesn’t want to tacitly go along with the destructive tendencies of our culture.
“We see change and movement in all sorts of direction; the situation is far from stagnating,” she continues. “The main challenge is this: what kind of people will Christians be in this moment of change? Will we be prepared and able to shape this moment or will we be bystanders watching the inevitable decay as if our mission was nothing but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?”
Kuby and the ADF organizers are well aware that the friendships and networks that Areté delegates form over the week are as important to their future as the content of their class lectures and seminars.
Areté graduates, she explains, “have direct access to incredible intellectual and other resources around the world through this network. The idea is that as people move through their careers, they will be connected to their peers with whom they have a very high level of trust. They will know that everyone in the network has gone through the same training and is solid.”
Attendees at this spring’s National Conservatism conference in Brussels had a real-time lesson of the value of ADF, and the networks it can rely on, when district mayors repeatedly ordered the police to shut down the NatCon conference. ADF’s lawyers on the scene leaped into action to defend NatCon, successfully arguing in an emergency hearing before Belgium’s high court that NatCon had a right to free speech and freedom of assembly. If not for ADF’s presence, its legal skill, and its contacts within conservative networks, the outcome would likely have been disastrous for the Right.
“This shows the beauty of the alliance,” says Kuby. “The right people in the right place with the right connections can tangibly—and quickly, for that matter—effect change for the better.”
The Brussels crisis also revealed why it is important for Christians and conservatives to prepare themselves in advance for these kinds of situations. In pre-communist Slovakia, Father Kolakovic had to battle against the complacency of many Catholic bishops, who refused to see the threat of the gathering storm. The reason Kolakovic’s followers were able to react to communist persecution so effectively is because they had prepared themselves, both spiritually and tactically, for that test.
“It’s that same idea, the same vision,” says Kuby. “You don’t make up your conviction in the moment. You need the convictions in place before the storm hits. Areté Academy is centered around this.”
ADF International developed the Areté Academy by taking best practices from ADF training programs in the United States, and adapting them for regional challenges and realities in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The truly global aspect of Areté training and networking are particular strengths in these times, Kuby believes, because engaged Christians need to learn from and support each other cross-culturally.
“The trends and challenges we face don’t stop at the border,” she says. “And the solutions and responses we need to find and articulate cannot be with a national perspective only, because it is simply not the reality of our world.”
Back home in Hungary, Areté delegate and Catholic pro-life activist Sári Pontifex e-mailed to say how dazzled she was by the intellectual formation and practical training she received at the Academy, as well as the friendships she made with Christians of her generation, who share her commitment to the faith, and to making a difference in public life. Said Pontifex, “Areté Academy was truly the best event I have ever been to.”
ADF International is now receiving applications for Areté Academy Europe 2025, which will be held in Vienna from March 30 to April 4. The application deadline is August 15, 2024. For more information, see https://adfinternational.org/arete/
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