A Catholic revival is taking hold at exclusive Stanford University as a growing share of Gen Z students embrace the the 2,000-year-old faith.
The campus best known for churning out high-achieving tech execs has seen a three-fold increase in Catholic converts — with 46 adults entering the church at Easter this year, up from 14 the year before, according to Fr. Bart Hutcherson, pastor of the Catholic Community at Stanford.
It’s an astonishing turnaround at a campus that averaged just four adult baptisms annually for about 30 years, the Dominican priest said.
“There is, not just at Stanford, a sense of recovery of tradition and what beauty teaches us about God,” Hutcherson told The California Post. “It’s very, very exciting.”
Hutcherson said he’s sought to make Stanford’s ministries more welcoming to students after he was appointed pastor roughly three years ago. The Catholic-curious coeds are drawn to traditional forms of worship, he said — complete with age-old hymns played on a pipe organ, Latin prayers and the ornate Byzantine details at Stanford Memorial Church.
Six hundred Stanford students packed into a recent Saturday afternoon Mass of the Holy Spirit — hundreds more than Hutcherson would have expected just a couple of years ago.
Contrary to the “pay, pray and obey” tropes about Catholicism, the priest said brainy and motivated Stanford students are often first attracted to Catholicism on an intellectual basis, educating themselves on church’s history and centuries-old philosophical traditions before taking the plunge.
That was true of Obi Nnorom, a sixth-year PhD student in electrical engineering who converted this year. After growing up Protestant, Nnorom spent a year studying immersing himself in the writings of church fathers, early martyrs, catechism and Catholic philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas. He read books and watched YouTube videos, eventually finding himself “astounded” by its more than 10,000 saints and early martyrs who formed the early church.
“That ultimately definitely had a major impact on my conversion,” said Nnorom, 27. “The intellectual tradition of Catholicism shocked me beyond belief.”
“It was humbling to see how much work had been done for 2000 years. And to me, it made so much sense that our Lord had left us a church,” he added.
Stanford isn’t alone in a trend of college co-eds enchanted by Catholic teachings.
According to data released by the prayer app Hallow, participation in the Order of the Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) on college campuses surged by 115% on average from the 2024-25 school year to 2025-26.
That included both campuses in red states, such as Kansas State University and Texas A&M, and more liberal-leaning campuses such as University of Southern California, Harvard, and Columbia University.
“All of this has happened at USC with zero marketing. Nothing,” said Deacon Paul Pesqueira of University of Southern California in a statement. “Always word of mouth.”
Stanford beat the curve, tripling the number of initiations since last year.
Quinn Healy, a Stanford student-athlete who plays water polo, described her conversion to Catholicism in in Valley Catholic, a magazine for the Diocese of San Jose.
“I felt like I had found something lasting, not another accomplishment to chase, but a relationship with Christ that brought a deeper sense of peace, purpose, and fulfillment into my life,” she said.
The Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV has been credited with inspiring young Americans to undergo the sacraments. Some young Gen Z converts have cited Catholic social media influencers and YouTube channels as their entree into the Church of Rome in a quest to understand their role in the world.
Hutcherson said much of it boils down to a search for beauty.
“In Catholic tradition, beauty is a transcendental experience. Young people, they seem more willing to say: That’s beautiful, and I can see God in that.”
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