Exclusive | Stanford students turn to Catholicism in big numbers in astonishing Gen Z campus revival

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 turnound 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 invocations and the elaborate Byzantine details at Stanford Memorial Church.

Six hundred Stanford students packed into a recent Saturday afternoon Mass of the Holy Spirit — hundreds more than he would have expected just a couple of years ago.Contrary to the “pay, pray and obey” tropes about Catholicism, Hutcherson said brainy and motivated Stanford students are 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, he 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 forme...