Catholic Conversions Surge at Stanford From 4 to 46 Annually

For three decades, the Catholic community at Stanford averaged 4 adult baptisms a year. This Easter, 46 students and young adults were fully initiated into the Church: 16 were baptized, 10 were received into full communion, and 20 Catholics were confirmed. The total of 46 is up from 14 initiations the year before. Father Bart Hutcherson, the community’s priest, says almost all of this year’s newly baptized adults were Stanford students.

Stanford is part of a broader surge documented by the Catholic prayer app Hallow. It collected data from nearly 60 college and university Catholic ministries. Across those reporting ministries, participation in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, aka OCIA, rose by an average 115%. At Stanford, it tripled. 

Stanford’s growth is hardly isolated: Harvard’s OCIA participation doubled, while NYU and USC recorded substantial increases. American culture has long looked to its universities, particularly its elite ones, for a preview of what comes next. Campus rebellions in the 1960s helped reshape national politics and social attitudes. Identity politics, decolonization, and socialist thought later gained adherents at top American universities, left with their graduates, and entered the institutions those graduates eventually led. Based on conversion rates over the last two years, Harvard and Stanford are now experiencing unprecedented growth in their Catholic communities. This growth is found on elite campuses across the country.