Candles danced and hymns rang out this spring as an estimated 1,600 adults establishing their new spiritual home in the Catholic Church gathered for Lenten-season liturgies known as the Rite of Election.
So many converts had spent months preparing for the sacraments that would bring them into full church participation that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix had to split the event into multiple services in 2026 and also in 2025.
Beneath the wings of the solemn occasion, which spread across four churches throughout metro Phoenix, was a wave of emotion that struck Bishop John Dolan.
"Real joy in their heart," Dolan said of seeing the soon-to-be converts. "They’re just so excited."
What's happening in metro Phoenix is what is being reported by Catholic dioceses nationwide: The church is welcoming new adult members at higher rates. This phenomenon is one reason the Phoenix diocese has grown to be the country's second biggest in population.
Metro Phoenix residents, all under 40 years old, spoke with The Arizona Republic about their recent path to Catholicism. Nearly all referenced the Catholic Church’s deep history. All expressed how Catholicism strengthened their Christian faith, whether newfound or long-held.
"Something holy is taking place, something historical, something that goes way back, and they're intrigued by that," said Joyce Coronel, the Phoenix diocese’s manager over evangelization and sacramental life. She described the current scale of interest to come to the church as "enormous."
Growth in Catholic converts is seen across the country
Coronel starts her work day early, anticipating she will talk to people searching for religious fulfillment. There is no shortage; she said her office is "inundated" with phone calls and emails asking about the church.
The hundreds at this year's Rite of Election services made for some of the highest turnouts in the country, according to the diocese.
Those who want to join participate in several months of study before they are baptized (if they haven't been already) and receive confirmation and the Eucharist at Easter Vigil services at their parish churches. The celebration of these sacraments concludes the new converts' spiritual preparation under what is called the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults.
Most of the younger converts, according to Coronel, 62, express a longing for authenticity.
"'I don't wanna just go to a concert or a pep talk. Like, I want something holy,'" Coronel said a recent convert in his 20s told her. "When you walk into a Catholic church and you walk into a Mass, you encounter something otherworldly."
The Phoenix diocese has in recent years swelled to 2.01 million parishioners, according to internal data.
This makes the Phoenix diocese second in the U.S. only to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, according to the 2025 edition of the Official Catholic Directory, which is published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 2024, the Phoenix diocese ranked seventh.
The growth has prompted internal discussions about establishing as many as four more parishes and building new churches in the future, Brett Meister, the diocese's communications director, said on July 6. Only days before, the diocese announced the addition of a parish in Laveen.
The Phoenix diocese provided The Republic with recent convert figures. The Republic measured the differences between 2022, the first full year after COVID-19 mask mandates were loosened in Arizona, and 2025, the most recent year with full data.
The diocese had 512 adult baptisms in 2025, according to the data. This reflected a 46.7% jump from 2022, an 84.8% spike from 2023 and a 24% bump from 2024.
"Adult baptisms have increased significantly over the past three years, and we anticipate this number will also be higher as the solid data from 2026 comes in," Meister said.
The diocese saw 1,404 confirmations and 1,118 first communions in 2025 for adults compared with 507 confirmations and 621 first communions in 2022, according to data provided.
Of 71 Catholic dioceses in the U.S. that responded to queries by the National Catholic Register, all but five expected a rise in converts, some significantly, ahead of Easter Sunday 2026, the publication reported.
A national survey conducted Feb. 22-May 31 by the Archdiocese of Chicago found specific reasons for conversion. The 2,127 respondents, including some in Phoenix and Peoria, were in the process of converting.
A major motive was "personal hunger," as in pursuing goodness, truth and inner peace. Another leading aim for conversion was "institutional church," citing the liturgy or the "wisdom" of the 2,000-year-old body.
The majority of respondents, 69%, were Gen Z-ers and millennials. Most respondents, 64%, identified as "White, non-Hispanic."
Recent Phoenix-area converts explain why Catholicism
Five new Catholics within the Phoenix diocese shared how they were called to the church.
Brittney and Gavin Stinson of Gilbert met and fell in love while in college. Before they exchanged vows in September, they sought what Gavin Stinson, 29, said was "a solid foundation."
The pair grew up Christian — he in a nondenominational upbringing in Arizona and she within the Lutheran church in Minnesota. After reading the Bible front-to-back together, the couple felt the Roman Catholic Church best sated their religious curiosity with certainty.
"I think where we were trying to get answers and piece together everything. There was never an actual answer. It felt like it was just kind of like, 'Well, it could be this,'" Brittney Stinson, 27, said of other religious doctrine teachings. Catholicism "is like, 'No, this is the answer, and this is why. Here's some different readings to back it up.'"
For Riley Myers, 23, her spiritual awakening came about sometime after she returned in August 2024 to her home in Avondale. She had been away during a period that included what she described as a fruitless year at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
"I was trying to find who I was and felt like I wasn't going anywhere. And I was just really sick and tired of it, and so I prayed to God and begged for him to help me," Myers said. "I decided I wanted to go back to church."
Myers’ stepfather had taken her as a 14-year-old to St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Avondale. Considering the church, located on Thomas Road near Litchfield Road, was the nearest to her home, she drove there for Mass in early 2025. She was swept away by the stillness of the church and the reverence she witnessed among the congregants.
"I understood it on a level I couldn't when I was younger," she said. "It was just this warmth and this presence."
And she was in awe of the embodiment of the faith in the detailed body of Christ on the cross hanging above the church’s altar.
Similarly, Austin Enenbach had been on a spiritual journey when in early 2025 he found Catholicism on campus as a student at Grand Canyon University.
Enenbach had gone to Protestant services but said he had never been as moved as he was during worship at Holy Spirit Newman Center, a small Catholic church for GCU students on the corner of Camelback Road and 31st Avenue in Phoenix. The 23-year-old Litchfield Park resident said he was struck by the veneration of those gathered who were on their knees and how the sacraments were upheld in the holy space.
"In the Catholic Church there's so much beauty, there's so much architecture, and everything you look at points you to Jesus," Enenbach said.
Scott Johnson grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but stopped attending services at 12.
As an adult in 2024, he lost a friend and a family member to suicide two months apart, was laid off and his home suffered a flooding. His YouTube algorithm started suggesting videos on Biblical archaeology, an interest that had never waned for the 38-year-old Glendale resident.
Around the same time, another friend began discussing Catholicism with Johnson, who was then compelled to convert. The emphasis on history in the conversion classes appealed to him, along with the antiquity of the church, whose faith tradition lists the Apostle Peter as the first pontiff, he said.
Aside from however comforted he was by the church in a time of personal struggle, Johnson said he converted "'cause my heart was open. I heard him knocking. I answered the door."
Bishop Dolan offers theories, leaves it to God
The church has been undergoing a transformation in the past 13 years. Pope Leo XIV and his predecessor, Pope Francis, were the first two pontiffs born in the Americas. Leo, like Francis before him, has pushed for the inclusion of marginalized groups and pushed for social justice.
"We're seeing the church moving more out of the theology books and more into the streets and into the care of people," Dolan said.
And the converts The Republic spoke with have immersed themselves in the church’s ministries of outreach.
The Stinsons are part of their parish’s conference of the Society of St. Vincent De Paul, where they regularly volunteer in food drives. Gavin Stinson and Johnson are members of the Catholic fraternal order of the Knights of Columbus, where they carry out charitable deeds.
Dolan, 63, said younger generations are "more emboldened" to pursue what they feel has been "missing" after 50 to 60 years of decline in religious participation in the U.S.. Social media, he suggested, also appears to more immediately explain Catholicism to the masses, particularly to Gen Z users.
Dolan said it's "OK" not to have a concrete answer for the boost in converts. He is leaving the timing and reasons behind the growth to the unknown workings of the divine.
After all, the Roman Catholic church is full of mysteries of the faith.
"Why did God come to us 2,000 years ago instead of 500 years ago or even 100 years ago in the person of Jesus?" Dolan said. "The Holy Spirit moves as he wills."