Report: OCIA participation surges at colleges nationwide
Campus ministries have also seen growth in the number of students receiving the sacraments.
Participation in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) more than doubled, on average, at nearly 60 U.S. colleges and universities during the past school year, new data show.
OCIA participation grew by an average of 115% among the schools that provided data, Catholic prayer app Hallow reported Aug. 19. Across all participating ministries combined, the number of candidates and catechumens rose 87.6% between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.
Stanford University tripled its number of OCIA candidates and catechumens during the 2025-26 school year. Father Bart Hutcherson, pastor of the Catholic Community at Stanford, told Hallow that adult baptisms had averaged four annually for three decades.
“I baptized 16 this Easter,” he said, “and they were almost all Stanford students!”
At the University of Southern California, OCIA enrollment rose from 25 students in 2024-25 to 44 the following year. Deacon Paul Pesqueira, who has overseen the university’s OCIA program for 14 years, told Hallow the 76% increase came without advertising.
“All of this has happened at USC with zero marketing. Nothing,” he said. “Always word of mouth.”
Hallow also found growth beyond OCIA, with campus ministries reporting increased participation in Mass, retreats, Confession, and Eucharistic adoration.
At the University of South Carolina, daily attendance at St. Thomas More Catholic Church rose from an average of 45 students to 80, and fall retreat participation grew from 23 students in 2023 to 122 in 2025. More than 2,500 people also attended Ash Wednesday services this past year, Hallow reported, up from 500 in 2021.
Katie Washington, the ministry’s director of development, connected the increased participation to students’ growing interest in Catholicism.
“Young people are hungry in faith,” she told Hallow.
Mass attendance has also tripled over the past four years at the University of Utah’s St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Newman Center.
“The Holy Spirit brings people to a parish. Christ effects conversion,” Father Gabriel Mosher, the center’s pastor, told Hallow. “Christ infuses faith in people. We just have to be there to catch them.”
At Texas Christian University (TCU), nine students have already registered for OCIA ahead of Easter 2027, and the campus ministry has been preparing to offer two Confirmation classes to meet growing demand.
Sophia Carrenza, a TCU student who entered the Church through OCIA and now helps lead the program, said the pressures facing her generation have led some students to seek answers in the Church.
“Unfortunately, my generation has become consumed with the digital aspects of life and feel constant societal pressures to be a certain way or to act a certain way,” Carrenza told Hallow. “But at some point, one realizes that isn’t enough, that it’s not all it was made out to be. So, they start asking questions and searching for answers, for meaning.”
