New York Sees Rising Catholic Conversions Amid Broader National Trends

National Catholic register ^ | November 18, 2025

[Cronos]

A rising number of New Yorkers are reportedly converting to the Catholic Church, with the spike in converts coming as the U.S. bishops say increasing numbers of men and women are coming into the faith in this country.

The New York Post found that multiple New York City Catholic churches have year-over-year double or even triple the number of adults signing up to become Catholic through the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA).

At one parish, St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village, interest in OCIA tripled since last year, with about 130 people signing up, according to the paper. At St. Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side, numbers have doubled to nearly 90 participants.

Sign-ups at the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral also doubled to about 100, according to the report.

Many converts reportedly cited the Sept. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk as a motivator for their conversions. In addition to his political activism, Kirk, an evangelical Protestant, often spoke about the importance of faith in God.

This report follows a trend of rising OCIA numbers throughout the U.S.

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TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; Religion & Culture
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[Kudsman]

Bishop Cozzens said at the time, “Praise God. Let’s hope that this trend continues.”

Indeed. Let us also hope they find the way to their local polling place.

[one guy in new jersey]

Diocesan parish churches typically lack the rigor in their catechetical instructional programs to convey the faith, whole and entire, to children, much less to adults.

It’s a reflection, frankly, of the current state of the typucal diocesan/Novus Ordo seminary, chronically (practically comically) incapable of producing well-formed priests in anything close to the numbers needed to replace aging and retiring priests in the diocese or Archdiocese in question.

Moreover, and to be frank, the local ordinary (bishop, archbishop or cardinal archbishop) in the typical American diocese/archdiocese is showing distinct signs of lacking supernatural faith, and, having formal reports and official projections telling him that he’s going to have a chronic priest shortage on his hands by the late 2030s or early 2040s, not nearly enough to staff the current number of parishes, or to replace those priests who are growing older and must soon retire, has a beaten-down, “manage the decline” mindset. How can such men be expected to meet the immediate or medium-term spiritual and pastoral needs of so many new adult converts showing up at all of their parish churches?

The “version” of Catholicism these prelates have to offer in those parish churches is typically so thinned out and weak, in the wake of at least a half-century of (deliberately?) poor catechetical instruction, one wonders whether these new potential converts, having abruptly arrived, will just as abruptly begin to depart.