WHY Young Adults Are Drawn to the Catholic Church Like Never Before

June 11, 2025: A recent Free Press report has spotlighted a striking trend: young adults across the United States and Europe are converting to Catholicism in unexpected numbers.

Adult Baptisms Surge Across the West

This year’s rise in adult baptisms is particularly evident in U.S. dioceses such as Lansing, Michigan, which experienced a 30% increase in new converts, according to journalist Madeleine Kearns. Similar surges have been reported in France and England. At the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, a Catholic student centre baptised 20 students and received another 50 converts from other Christian traditions.

Kearns interviewed both recent converts and Church leaders, many of whom described this moment as a cultural shift—one where Catholicism is resonating in surprising places.

Among them is 22-year-old Jane from New York, baptised this Easter. Raised without religion, she said she was always drawn to the visual and emotional power of Catholicism. As a child, the baptism scene in The Godfather captured her imagination, and later she developed a deep admiration for the beauty of old churches—their stained glass, architecture, and music.

Jane said that a stunning work of art, or a beautiful piece of music, “shows how present God is in our lives to inspire us.”

Her journey to faith didn’t begin in catechism classes, but through encounters with Gregorian chant, Mozart’s Requiem, and the quiet grandeur of cathedrals. Later, during a period of anxiety over graduate school applications, she felt an unexplained urge to watch a livestream of Mass from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“I just immediately felt, like, this sense of peace,” she said.

Beauty as a Doorway to Faith

Bishop Robert Barron and other Catholic leaders have long promoted beauty as a gateway to evangelisation, and it appears increasingly effective among Gen Z. “It’s easy to forget, in an age of efficiency and technology, that human beings need beauty and awe,” Kearns wrote.

Kearns also interviewed Darnell, 21, who found Catholicism through a campus missionary. He was moved by the reverence and silence of the Mass, and later by the intensity of Eucharistic adoration.

“I’ll never forget when one of the priests was walking up and down the aisles… and just the people that were crying and bowing, and the atmosphere was amazing,” he recalled. “That’s when I knew: Okay, this is exactly what I was searching for.”

A convert from Michigan, he said Catholicism “doesn’t shame you for being a man” and emphasised its appeal to young men seeking meaning.

“It’s that brotherhood among other brothers of Christ, along with that discipline that I believe is bringing so many young men to Catholicism,” he told Kearns.

A Rising Brotherhood of Young Catholic Men

The rise of male converts was noted by Fr. Charles Gallagher, pastor of Immaculate Conception in D.C., Kearns reported. Of the seven adults he baptised this year, six were men.

Fr. Gallagher observed that some young men initially gravitate toward online personalities who frame masculinity as under attack in modern culture. While those messages may resonate at first, Fr. Gallagher told Kearns that many soon recognise that figures in the so-called “manosphere” are “kind of false prophets.”

That realisation, he said, often marks the beginning of a deeper search. “They’re led to Christianity,” he said. “They’re led to Catholicism.”

Courtesy: Free Press