The candlelit church in Greenwich Village was packed. After months of study and preparation, 19 adults sat at the front, dressed in white, nervously awaiting their turn at the baptismal font. One by one, they stepped forward. After anointing them with chrism (holy oil), the priest poured water over their heads, baptizing them into the Catholic Church in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
“It was almost as if the veil between heaven and earth had been lifted,” said Jane, one of the adults baptized into the Church that day. She left feeling “more receptive to the supernatural.”
That was Easter Sunday 2025, just over a month ago. And what happened in Greenwich Village happened across America. There was a boom in adult baptisms.
Earlier this year, The Pillar reported a surge in the numbers of aspiring Catholics registering to join the church at Easter. The Diocese of Lansing in Michigan reported a 30 percent spike from the previous year, 633 converts, which is the highest they’ve seen in over a decade. Father Ryan Kaup, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Catholic center, baptized 20 students alone—“the highest we’ve ever had”—and gave rites of initiation to an additional 50 who were coming into the church from other Christian denominations.
And now, of course, we have an American pope, Leo XIV, who church leaders hope will turbocharge the country’s Catholic boom.
America is not alone. The Catholic boom is also happening in France—which saw a 45 percent increase in the number of adult baptisms this year—and in England—where, due to a surge in Mass attendance, Catholics are on track to outnumber Anglicans for the first time since the Church of England was born.
Why are so many adults in the once-secularized West seeking to be baptized into the Catholic Church? I’ve been reporting on the rise in religiosity for a while now, and have heard many theories: Modern Americans are starved of beauty, meaning, purpose, and community. The Church of Rome offers all these things, but so do other religions. So: Why Catholicism?