A growing hotspot for college students in Los Angeles used to mean a bar or a trendy coffee shop. But at the University of Southern California, lately it’s been the Catholic Mass.
At USC’s Caruso Catholic Center and Our Savior Church, a record-breaking number of young adults attended Mass and converted into the Church during the 2025-26 school year.
The growing number of students interested in the faith at USC is both a reflection of a broader surge of Catholic conversions in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and across the nation.
“I come to church, it’s full, and I think to myself, ‘Wow, this is amazing. Nobody’s parents dragged them into Mass this morning,’ ” said Father Matthew Wheeler, pastor of Our Savior and a graduate of USC himself. “All of these students are here because they chose to be.”
At Our Savior, the number of catechumens and candidates more than doubled to 44 between 2023 and 2026, said Deacon Paul Pesqueira, the coordinator of sacramental preparation. At the Easter Vigil, 16 were baptized into the Church while 49 were confirmed in the spring….
The growing number of students is also a result of Our Savior’s mastery of blending online and in-person encounters to build community.
The method the Catholic Center, which students refer to as the CC, uses to encounter students doesn’t just involve tabling or on-campus events, but reaching young adults through the place they’re rarely separated from: social media.
Since coming to Our Savior in 2024, Wheeler’s followers on Instagram have grown to more than 190,000, while on TikTok, the priest has more than 35,000 followers.
On the campus of about 40,000 students, some believe Wheeler’s presence has made a dent in Mass attendance and OCIA participation.
“More people on campus who aren’t Catholic know about the Catholic Center just because of Father Matt,” said Jeryn Dizon, a recent graduate and former president of the students’ leadership board. “If I say I’m Catholic, they’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, I saw the priest’s reel on my Instagram.’ ”
What also helped, Dizon said, was the election of Pope Leo XIV and the Church’s first American pope, which triggered a massive influx of information online about the Catholic faith….
Nathan Torres, who came into the Church this spring, remembers the first time he felt the call to become Catholic.
“I went to Mass at the CC for the first time during Lent. I sat in the front row and Deacon Paul looked me in the eyes while he was reading the Gospel, and he said, ‘Let us rejoice for my son, who’s home,’ ” said Torres, a junior at USC studying health promotion and disease prevention studies. “In that moment, I was like, ‘I’m home, I need to become Catholic….’ ”
During the academic year, Our Savior offers multiple opportunities for Eucharistic adoration and confession, two daily Masses during the week and three Sunday Masses, including one at 8 p.m….
From Angelus News
This is good and encouraging news. Thanks for posting it. I recently had breakfast with the priest chaplain from San Jose State University, where I did my undergraduate work. God is working in the lives of many young adults there as well. Let’s continue to pray for and support young people, chaplains and others who serve them.
As long as they’re taught they can’t be Democrats if they’re Catholics, all will be fine. But there are a lot of Democrats in Los Angeles. One problem is that Catholic doesn’t practically mean anything anymore because people with contradicting beliefs about the faith all consider themselves to be Catholic. Fr. James Martin and Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Cupich and Cardinal McElroy and Bishop Barron and Taylor Marshal and Fr. Bryan Massingale and Scott Hahn and Nancy Pelosi and JD Vance can’t all really be Catholic without making a lot of qualifications. Being Catholic means almost nothing anymore.
There are many varieties of pizza, but a taco is not a pizza. If the Church is like a pizzaria chain, we have some chains making tacos and claiming them to be pizzas. We even have taco bishops and priests.
“We even have taco bishops and priests.”
Yes …… but such clerics will be “here today and gone tamale.”
Sometimes it seems more young people are coming to faith at non-Catholic colleges than at some Catholic colleges.
It seems more young people are entering the Church at UCLA, USC, SJSU, Texas A&M, and other places than at Santa Clara University, USD or Loyola Marymount. A “faith” that’s a weakened or dead version of Christianity simply isn’t attractive to young people, including those raised in Catholic families and schools and even those raised in unbelief. As Chesterton noted, the Church seems “to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer.” Some truths are eternal. What will future generations think of our times, when leading public officials claim they don’t know the number of genders there are or what a woman is?
And, some clergy think sodomy can be blessed?
I have to agree with SBK. I went to a secular college (1968) where Christianity was mocked by many students and by some professors. I found Christ there as a freshmen and battled with anti-christian sentiment the rest of the way till graduation. I remember visiting an evangelical Christian college during this time and was surprised to see how lethargic so many students seemed about their Christian profession. I saw the wisdom of having to profess Christ in a hostile setting. If you could fight the good fight of faith, you grew stronger. Sadly, I saw Christians with weak faiths drop like flies at the influence of powerful secular forces.
It was costly to stand for Christ and I saw those who could not pay the cost. Later I would convert to Catholicism (1978) and that decision too was costly. Now at 75 I thank God for all the trials, the result of which has kept me faithful. I fear the Catholic schools SBK mentioned do not promote conversion in a way that demands a cost.
Today, July 25th, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo XIV has appointed SF Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court, to serve a five-year term as a Canon Lawyer. He will remain as SF Archbishop, but will travel to Rome several times a year, to help judge cases. Abp. Cordileone previously served as an assistant at the Apostolic Signatura from 1995-2002. He holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
Awesome news. just be sure to lock your doors when visiting, as USC borders the neighborhood of Watts. Come to think of it, some of the most prestigious American universities seem to be in neighborhoods that have a lot of crime: Yale, Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, Temple . . . .
A few months ago, some athletes and coaches from my high school, St. Joseph Regional in Montvale, New Jersey, visited some colleges in Los Angeles. I met them at USC, where I earned a master’s degree. The chapel has an interesting crucifix where Jesus is alive and conscious. It appears that He is looking at you, no matter where you are sitting. Over lunch, they told me how impressed with USC they were. They also told me that they were treated very coldly at UCLA the day before.