PITTSBURGH — Last September, Pastor Jason Howard of the Sanctuary Church in Pittsburgh saw a surge of young people flocking to his Christian congregation, the week after Charlie Kirk was murdered.
Howard knew that something had shifted. Yes, their congregation had always been predominantly youth-driven, but this was different. Lines began to form for their services. Public transportation was dropping off children by the busload from campuses across the city, and he knew that he had an obligation to expand. Howard teamed up with local college students at the University of Pittsburgh, and a revival called Pitt Purposes was held on campus, attracting about 600 students and led by members of the university’s football team.
But the youth movement didn’t pause. In fact, it grew, leading to last week’s revival at the University of Pittsburgh’s Peterson Center that attracted thousands and included hundreds of baptisms, most in pickup trucks.
Howard said that after Pitt for Jesus happened in the fall, they really wanted to do a follow-up. “Our hope was that we could do something big like at the Petersen Event Center,” he said.
Jake Overman, the captain of the Pitt football team, reached out to Unite Us, a ministry that has partnered with university students to organize big arena events at college campuses. Overman, who might get drafted or picked up as a free agent in next month’s draft in Pittsburgh, led the Pitt for Jesus movement last fall.
There is one catch: Unite Us almost exclusively does events below the Mason-Dixon line. Nonetheless, they secured the Petersen Event Center, located in the middle of the Oakland Campus, and Overman and an army of students began canvassing the local campuses here for turnout.
There are several universities and colleges in the Pittsburgh area: Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne, Robert Morris, LaRoche, Point Park, Carlow, Chatham, and Allegheny Community College.
By the time the event happened last week, over 5,000 young people were in attendance, with several hundred of them choosing to be baptized that evening.
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They are not alone. For the first time in decades, faith in this country is growing, not retreating — particularly among our young people, something that I’ve been reporting for the past year. In my rural parish, a Roman Catholic Church in the Diocese of Greensburg, our attendance has nearly doubled since last fall. Unless you get to Mass at least 15 minutes before services begin, you are left standing for the entire service — and that is with added folding chairs in the back, along the side, and with the choir pews above us filled.
This week alone, across the Diocese of Greensburg, over 200 people, young and not-so-young, will be welcomed and fully initiated into our Catholic community. Eighty-three of those individuals will be baptized, confirmed, and receive the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. One hundred seventeen candidates who are already baptized in either the Catholic Church or another Christian denomination will be confirmed and receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time.
On Sunday, the Mother of Sorrows parish, which is also part of the Diocese of Greensburg, also had standing-room-only services on Palm Sunday. This has become the norm every Sunday. All three parking lots were packed, with cars straddling the grass leading down to the highway. Nearby Dick’s Diner was also filled with parishioners.
The surge in Roman Catholic Church converts is being felt across the United States. Dioceses in the Rust Belt, Midwest, and Bible Belt are seeing record numbers of people received into the Catholic Church. Last fall, the New York Times reported that the Archdioceses of Detroit, Galveston-Houston, and Des Moines are also seeing significant increases.
Ryan Burge, the research director of My Faith Counts, a nonprofit nondenominational organization comprised of faith communities from across the country, noted that new data show that the share of Americans who are nonreligious has dropped for the third year in a row, with atheists and agnostics down to 5% each. Burge cited data that was collected in October 2025.
Pastor Howard said that he and other leaders at Sanctuary have been praying for years for the college students in our city to have a true encounter with God.
“What we’re witnessing right now is an answer to many years of prayers,” he said. “Seeing this many college students turn to Jesus, and not just in a casual way but in a passionate way; willing to follow him wholeheartedly.”
Sophia Schweiger was one of those students. The 23-year-old is in a master’s program in Dietetics and is studying to become a dietitian. She said that growing up in a Catholic family, faith has always been part of her upbringing. But she lost her way a few years ago when she was in high school. “I had four extremely rough years, then I fell into alcohol, gossip, and clicky friend groups, boys, etc. I never really felt like I fit in anywhere in high school,” she said before adding that it was a feeling of emptiness.
Schweiger said that she meandered for a while in college. First, she attended Penn State, then Pittsburgh. It was here that she found herself missing the closeness with God, which she began pursuing again this year, and which became so profound that she found herself helping others find their way.
“When I was baptizing people that night, so many of them had stories of how God rescued them from depression, addiction, mental health issues, and a lack of purpose,” she said. “It was remarkable how many of them said that God had saved them from these things, and that’s why they were going public with their faith through baptism.”
Howard said that this movement isn’t hard to understand once you understand what faith in God does for people and what purpose it brings to their lives.
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“I think overall young people are really looking for something real, and I think that this generation has really gotten to the point where the world seems out of control, and the world seems to be so subjective,” Howard said.
He added that people are desperately looking for something absolute to anchor their lives in. “And, of course, God is the absolute that can anchor our lives.”
