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This past spring, a record 85 people became Catholic at St. Paul’s Catholic Church across the street from Harvard University, and 45 of those were Harvard students or faculty.
This year, 65 have registered so far, which is keeping apace with last year’s “dramatic increase” in conversions, Father Nathaniel Sanders, the undergraduate chaplain at Harvard, told EWTN News.
Last year’s group, which came from both the Harvard Catholic Center and St. Paul’s, was the “largest class of people becoming Catholic in our history … So, there is something really exciting happening here,” Sanders also noted in a recent episode of “The Great American Road Trip,” a cultural and tourism initiative created to celebrate the countryʼs 250th anniversary.
In the episode, the family of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy travels to Boston while their daughter, Paloma, is considering various college options, including Harvard. The young womanʼs parents arrived with reservations about the possibility of their daughter studying there, as they fear it threatens to undermine the Christian upbringing she received at home.
However, a meeting with Sanders ultimately gives them a different perspective.
A growing Catholic community
In the video, the chaplain speaks not only about those preparing to join the Church but he also highlights the increase in student participation in Catholic life at Harvard.
“Student attendance at Mass is very good right now. It has definitely increased by 10% to 20% in recent years,” he notes.
According to a report published in December 2025 by The Wall Street Journal, Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s currently draws an average of about 300 students, up from around 200 a few years ago.
Sanders says one of the characteristics of this community is the profile of the participants.
“We have very intelligent, high-achieving students. We can give talks on a range of issues, and the students ask great questions,” he explains in the video. “I am really grateful for what God is doing here.”
The Holy Spirit is behind the increase in conversions
Regarding the growth, Sanders told EWTN News that “there’s nothing particular about Harvard” that explains it. “There’s a wider trend going on among young people, and I attribute that to the Holy Spirit. I think there are real cultural factors at play leading students to want to discover more about the faith.”
He said a lot of the conversions on campus are driven through Bible study groups on campus. “We run about 30 different Bible studies, with the help of the FOCUS missionaries,” who “do a lot of outreach, get people involved.”
He credited many conversions to a study being led by “a dynamic student on a sports team who will run a Bible study with the help of the missionaries. A lot of converts have come through that.”
The two main groups of students he sees becoming Catholic at Harvard are unchurched youth who grew up in culturally Catholic homes but never received the sacraments and former evangelical Protestants.
“Fewer children are being baptized these days, so those who were never churched, who were raised culturally Catholic, in some sense, are coming in showing interest in the faith,” he told EWTN News.
The second group, former “megachurch Protestants, begin to read” about the Catholic faith, he said, “and then that’s sort of the end of it” — they convert.
Students speak out
John Phillips, a former president of the Harvard Catholic Center, told The Wall Street Journal last year that he had nearly turned down his admission to Harvard because he had previously attended only Catholic schools and feared he would not be able to grow in his faith within such a secular environment.
However, upon arriving on campus in 2022, he found students who, while taking their academic studies seriously, were equally committed to Catholicism.
“I saw a community I could be a part of,” Phillips explained.
Adaolisa Mba, now a senior and the Harvard Catholic Center’s formation chair, shared a similar experience with The Wall Street Journal: “It’s really impressive to be in a Catholic community with a lot of people my age. We motivate each other to be closer to God.”
‘I donʼt think thereʼs anything nefarious going on’
After visiting Boston College and heading on to Harvard, Paloma’s mother, Rachel Campos Duffy, remarked in the episode: “We have a saying in our house, and I say it all the time to the kids: My job isn’t to get you into Harvard, it’s to get you into heaven. So it’s kind of ironic that we’re now going to tour Harvard.”
The family had a chance to meet with Sanders during their visit, and Paloma’s father expressed to him his fear that the school might undermine the faith he had taught his children and weaken their convictions.
Addressing this concern, Sanders said: “I think it depends on the kids, whether or not they’re sort of coming with the virtues necessary to live out that life well. But I don’t think there is anything nefarious going on.”
“You come here because it’s the best opportunity. And if someone has a sense of themselves and a sense of God before coming, I think that will only flower,” he added.
The issue is not about preventing a young Catholic from having their beliefs challenged, Sanders said, but rather ensuring they have a sufficiently deep-rooted faith.
“If they are confident enough in their faith that they won’t have an existential crisis the first time it’s challenged in class, and they have the social skills,” he said, young Catholics can “thrive at Harvard.”
“Visiting Harvard seems to ease my parents’ concerns and the assumptions they had about the school, and I think they were pleasantly surprised to see how strong the Catholic community there is,” Paloma observed.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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Staying Catholic at Harvard vs. Boston College – my money is on Harvard. The only good thing I can say about Boston College: Peter Kreeft. There is a quote I have heard attributed to Dr. Kreeft: “I used to teach at a Catholic college, now I teach at a Jesuit college.” It sounds like something he would say.
Former evangelical Protestants? Now that’s interesting. I’m more familiar with the Catholic to Evangelical movement.
Cleo, I went to a Baptist college where students complained that the church history class was teaching them about bishops and with an ecclesiology that didn’t mirror ours and a salvation that didn’t sound like ours. The president of the college heard these complaints and announced one evening that the church history class was going to change over to teaching about “our bunch” during post-apostolic times. I was eager to hear this as I was taking the class in the immediate semester. When challenged by a bold student half way through my semester about when he was going to follow the president’s instructions, our teacher, as I recall, threw up his hands in frustration and said, “I can’t. It isn’t there.”
This illustrates an important foundation we share with our separated brethren. There is a healthy understanding among many, that in some visible respect, there needs to be continuity between the church we attend today and the apostles. My class haunted me for years before I discovered the Catholic faith. My sister followed, and my parents after that. Now, decades later, a second adult niece is leaving Evagelicalism to take instruction in OCIA.
I think our own Dr. Olson here at CWR is from a similar background. Anecdotes abound, as well as stories that are popping up now about young college kids converting, in many cases from Evangelical backgrounds. Maybe it is hard for cradlers to understand how comforting it is to find the fulness of the faith in a church with visible, historical continuity for 2,000 years. That is your church Cleo! Praise God. And sometimes silly and zealous new converts can’t help but being a little obnoxious in their exuberance about their discovery. It has been over 30 years now, and answering you has also reminded me that I really sometimes forget why my heart should always be aglow, and ready to burst into exuberant flame every once in a while. This note has been such an occasion.
It speaks volumes that a Catholic desiring to keep his Catholic faith during the university years has a better chance of doing just that at Harvard than at Boston College. Pethaps the Jesuits at B.C. might one day return to the True Faith. Who knows; miracles happen.
Rory McKenzie above (9:36 a.m.)
Thanks for your comments. I am aware of converts like Mr. Olson, Fr. Dwight Longenecker and John Bergsma. They all credit their Evangelical roots for grounding their faith. Casey Chalk is another one (not sure Calvinists count as Evangelicals). I guess I’m thinking more at the ground level, where some leave Catholicism because too many Catholics are wishy-washy about their faith and Evangelicals tend to be more fervent.
P.S. I’m quite happy for Evangelicals who bring their fervency along with their conversion.
Yes, Calvinists, at least in the U.S., are commonly referred to as “Evangelicals.” It’s a broad term, but it does have some specific historical roots in the mid-20th century.
I once was at a lunch table at a hospital where I worked with two protestant ministers – one a Baptist and the other a Lutheran. They knew I was a Catholic clergyman. We got to talking about Christianity and belief and, in all sincerity, I asked them to tell me what the difference in belief there was that would make one a Baptist and the other a Lutheran. They couldn’t say.