By Julia Bourbon
“Social media. Information overload. Existential dread.” It reads like a college course load from hell for a member of Gen Z. And in a way, it is.
“We were brought up in a time when traditional masculinity was being reckoned with. Our fathers embodied that traditional masculine archetype,” says Tate Farinacci, speaking of some of the challenges of his generation. “It’s also the era of mental health and emotional health, and all of these things conflicting with each other.”
Farinacci, who graduated from John Carroll University (JCU) this past May, was part of the inaugural group of about 50 young men in a campus ministry program called Brothers’ Keeper. Its goal: Get male students to open up emotionally in conversation with mentors and peers in small groups and encourage them to view vulnerability as an asset in their lives and relationships.
Now in its second year, this intentional community aims to ease the isolation that so many young people — and young males in particular — are feeling in a time of extreme connectivity. It aims to help them develop the emotional tools they need to create and sustain meaningful friendships.
Not a Bible Study, Not a Fraternity
Brothers’ Keeper is the work of Br. Matt Wooters, SJ, a 2009 JCU grad who returned to the suburban Cleveland campus in 2024 as assistant director of campus ministry and an adjunct professor of theology.
Gregarious and affable by nature, Br. Wooters was previously a vocation promoter for the Midwest Province and has spent a fair amount of time on college campuses — enough to notice that young men were pervasively lonely and, lacking social skills and confidence, struggled to make even tentative, let alone deep, connections with their peers.
“That was new for me. Just shooting the [breeze], I would share and they responded about internet things. None of it was real life,” B. Wooters says. “One very vulnerable young man said, ‘How do I make friends? How do I introduce myself?’”
Wooters, 38, recalls going to a party his younger cousin was deejaying a few years ago and realizing he was the only one dancing. “This generation that is hyper-filmed is very nervous about putting themselves out there,” he says. Instead of getting on the dance floor, “They were all filming to show everyone that they were there.”
These experiences crystallized things for him and led to the program’s start as a pilot last academic year. Many of the participants were invited because they are active and visible on campus — think tour guides, orientation leaders, athletes — young men who seem to have everything going for them but are still experiencing the acute isolation that defines their generation.
That was intentional, Br. Wooters says, because if those guys are struggling, then other young men might not feel “less than” for feeling the same way.
“The boys have really taken to it,” he says of the group, whose tagline is “Brotherhood. Accountability. Community.”
“There isn’t anything like this that I know of. It’s not a Bible study, and it’s not a fraternity.”
The group relies on time spent together in-person — usually twice a month in small groups of eight to 12, where they can speak candidly and openly about their lives with guidance and facilitation from a staff mentor. But this being 2026, much of that community is also facilitated via group chat. Whether it’s a student texting to say he aced that test or job interview he was worried about or another reaching out for support on a tough day, the group responds with genuine encouragement, solace or kudos.
Just as often, it’s Br. Wooters or one of the participants tossing out an invitation to meet for a burrito or a beer after class. And while that seems like a normal thing for buddies to do, these young men didn’t necessarily start out as friends or even acquaintances. Yet they have welcomed the opportunity to meet in community to reflect on a poem Br. Wooters might bring to facilitate conversation or to work through anxiety, sadness or fears that are troubling them.
Too often, Br. Wooters says, young men are discouraged from talking not only about the difficult stuff, but the good stuff, too — the successes, large and small. The small groups encourage them to do both.
“Share a win, stand in your light. Don’t water it down,” says Br. Wooters, whose background includes a master’s degree in social work. “We don’t have a handbook [for this]. We’re really just building community right now, and what we’re doing is working.”
That community may be expanding, as Br. Wooters sends out feelers to young men beyond the campus, ages 22 to 29, to gauge interest in forming small groups of their own.
Intentional and Vulnerable
Brothers’ Keeper didn’t exist when Tomi Korsa was a student at JCU (he graduated in 2020), but as a group mentor and assistant director of campus ministry today, he can look back and see how the need was there even then, and how it grew with pandemic isolation and social media use.
Something Korsa emphasizes to the young men in his small group is the difference between time spent hanging out with friends, watching sports, chitchatting and time spent “being real with themselves and with each other,” he says. “I want this to be a space of intentional conversation.”
That’s not easy, he says, and requires stepping out of one’s comfort zone. But the young men who join the group have already demonstrated a willingness to do that by virtue of showing up for each other every time the group gathers and in their supportive texts.
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Saint Francis Chapel on JCU’s campus
“One of the things I think men feel is they don’t want to be seen as a try-hard, doing too much,” he says, reiterating Br. Wooters’ observation that young men today may be as reluctant to talk about their ups as they are their downs. “You can be real and celebrate the things you’re excited about and proud of. This really is a place where you don’t have to do anything other than be yourself [in order] to be cool.”
Junior Casey LaForce transferred to JCU in the second half of sophomore year and joined Brothers’ Keeper in his second semester. He worried he’d have trouble fitting in midstream; instead, the group was so welcoming and the experience so positive, he’s continued on for a second year, as have many of his peers. Coming from a Jesuit high school (Canisius, in Buffalo), he was already comfortable with the concepts of Ignatian spirituality, which he sees at work in Brothers’ Keeper.
“Most weeks, we’re asking ourselves and the group to reflect. I think of the Examen and the introspective thinking that goes on there,” he says. “We get to the meeting and it’s kind of like a pause on how fast everything is moving.”
Part of that pause is leaving cell phones in their backpacks at the door, says LaForce. And nobody complains. “There’s too much good stuff being shared at the meetings,” he says. “I’ve never seen anyone on their phones.”
For Farinacci, the recent graduate, the impact of his year in Brothers’ Keeper is ongoing. The group chats he was part of have continued and followed him to Washington, D.C., where he’s spending a year as the NBC/John Carroll University Meet the Press Fellow.
He believes his interest in journalism and hearing people’s stories dovetails with his participation in the group, allowing him to be more comfortable with his own vulnerability and grow in his ability to be sympathetic to that of others, both personally and professionally.
“I think a big change in me was a sense of freedom and acceptance of myself. This is who I am and what I’m going through. I’m just going to share what I’m going through, unapologetically,” Farinacci says. “And I haven’t been burned yet.”
