Catholicism is growing in Philly and New Jersey. Who’s filling the pews?

Church bells rang out from one of Philadelphia’s oldest cathedrals, echoing off downtown parking garages and office buildings, while one of the city’s newer Catholics tried to explain his conversion.

Daniel Yesilonis, 32, grew up evangelical in the Harrisburg area and converted to Mormonism while studying at Temple University. He said his Mormon mission to Colorado Springs, Colo., was deflating, though, and after he came out as gay during the COVID-19 pandemic, he officially left that church.

Like millions of Americans, Yesilonis figured he would try his best to be decent, to be spiritual without a label or building attached to it. But he soon felt a sense of loss.

“It was like something was missing, maybe a sense of community or something,” Yesilonis said outside the church in April.

So, at an Easter vigil Mass in 2024, Yesilonis was among a group of candidates (people who were already baptized) and catechumens (those who were never baptized) who became Catholic and joined St. John the Evangelist on 13th Street.

Converts like Yesilonis are on the rise at churches all over Philadelphia and New Jersey, diocese officials said, a conversion boom that is being reported globally, including large spikes in Canada and France. In Philly, there have been 1,162 candidates and catechumens this year, which is a 60% increase since 2025 and a 100% increase since 2017.

Researchers and religious scholars said it was too soon to say much about the recent spike, but noted that a rise would be bucking long-term trends. Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center found that Catholicism has lost more people than it has gained in 24 countries it surveyed, including the United States. A 2025 Pew study found that Christianity’s long-term losses were starting to “level off,” but according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, two high schools closed in 2021, and the last time a new Catholic school and parish opened was back in 2010.

Since 2012, 34 Catholic churches have closed in the archdiocese. So the trend, while noticeable, is still a small change.

“There would have to be a huge swing, something dramatic would have to happen, for the church to start gaining huge numbers,” said Patricia Tevington, a Pew Research assistant who lives in Philadelphia.

There is no one reason for the recent increase, diocese officials said.

In the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the Rev. Gerald Dennis Gill said, many new devotees were baptized as children but did not grow up with Catholicism because their parents or other elders had stopped practicing. He believes they are experiencing a vacuum in their life and are seeking to fill that.

“Our culture is not offering something objectively good and true and beautiful, but it’s within all of us to seek that out,” he said. “People of all ages are finding the need to have a relationship with the Lord, for meaning and the promise of heaven.”

Across the river in the Camden Diocese, spokesperson Michael Walsh said, the number of catechumens grew from 194 last year to 238 in 2026, a nearly 23% increase.

Catholics are not knocking on doors the way Yesilonis had to in Colorado, but members of St. Agatha-St. James Parish had an “Ask a Catholic” tent at West Philly’s 68th annual Spruce Hill May Fair in Clark Park on May 9.

Newer Catholics whom The Inquirer spoke to in recent months (including this reporter’s adult son) cited a slew of different personal reasons for their decision.

“We’re all looking to God to help us, to save us. For me, it was time,” said Jana Muhammad, a “middle-aged” candidate who received the sacrament of confirmation at St. Monica’s in South Philly earlier this spring. “It’s really a rough, rough time out there right now. There’s no peace right now, and people are really looking for peace, and it’s not there right now. For me, personally, when it gets really rough, I absolutely pray to God.”

There is, however, a litany of theories being tossed around online and in the media about the increase in Catholicism that are sometimes at odds with one another.

The trend has been attributed to increasing conservatism in young men. Catholicism has also been offered up as an antidote to the so-called red pill, a “manosphere” belief that society now caters to women. Some say the increase is a Gen Z response to the isolation of the pandemic. Others say that technology burnout is fueling it. There have been stories about the rise of Catholic social media influencers and the popularity of the prayer app Hallow, which has been downloaded 32 million times since it debuted in 2018.

“People ask why priests always wear black. ’Cause everyday is a funeral for the haters,” the Rev. David Michael Moses, a Catholic “priestfluencer” with 1.1 million followers on Instagram, said in a post.

Actor Mark Wahlberg, a partner in Hallow, is a proud Catholic, but so is Shia LaBeouf, a recent convert who reportedly yelled, “I’m a Catholic,” while allegedly shouting homophobic slurs in New Orleans earlier this year.

The middle-ground, welcoming approach taken by the late Pope Francis and his successor, Pope Leo XIV, who has been vocal against President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, has also pulled people closer to Catholicism.

“Pope Francis inspired my decision,” Yesilonis said.

Yesilonis said he knows he could never marry a man in the Catholic Church, but he has found solace among the LGBTQ+ parishioners at St. John the Evangelist.

“I found a community as much as I found a church,” he said.

The Rev. Thomas Betz, of St. John’s, said the church “teaches and believes” the same tenet as the wider church, but has been open.

“St. John, by its very nature, is in the heart of the city and open to different races, and people who think differently, politically,” he said. “Everyone is welcome.”

Down in Cape May, Sara Kelly said she grew up in a family that gave up on formal religion, but still held on to a strong spiritual sense of right and wrong. Her father, Kurt, suffered from head and neck cancer for years, and after he died in 2019, she constantly wondered about the afterlife.

Kelly and her husband went to some nondenominational churches in Philadelphia, where she lived at the time, but did not find the answers she was looking for. The couple moved to the Shore and struggled with finances.

One day, while walking on the Delaware Bay beach, she fell to her knees and asked God for help.

“I’ve never done anything like that before,” she said.

At the advice of a relative, Kelly began sitting in a Catholic church in 2025, and later downloaded the Hallow app. She bought a rosary, too, and began going back to church multiple times a week, and eventually signed up for Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) classes.

“I know for me, it was really enjoyable to go to a place where the focus is only on love and trying to help others,” she said. “At every Mass, we’re praying for people caught up in war, people in Gaza and Ukraine.”

On a breezy April morning in South Philly, hundreds of people filed into St. Monica’s for the Rite of Confirmation Mass. A few dozen teens in white filled the front pews, but just behind them were a handful of adults, like Jana Muhammad, there to receive their final sacrament and take the name of a saint.

Muhammad chose Angelica. She was baptized as a child and grew up going to church. She said her stepmother did not want to “force” religion on her and gave her the choice to make up her own mind as an adult.

“And it was just time,” she said.

The Rev. Edward Town led the Christian initiation processes there and said the reasons adults come back vary from simple to profound.

“People want stability in their lives,” he said. “To young people, the world seems very unstable, and there’s a lot of uncertainty. I think our faith gives us a little hope, right?”

When the Mass was finished, the Rev. Efren V. Esmilla, auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia, extended an invitation to any other seekers sitting in the church.

“Come find us,” he said. “Our door is always open.”