Young men in their 20s and 30s are increasingly drawn to the Catholic Church as they seek truth, beauty and, yes, girlfriends.
After Gross moved to New York last summer, he started documenting his search for “The best Catholic church in NYC.”
His criteria included the beauty of the church, a community of young people and “no whack political stuff.” He declined to elaborate what constituted “whack political stuff.”
“I’m not a political influencer at all,” he said. “And I wouldn’t even say I’m a Catholic influencer. Catholicism and my faith is just one part of my personal brand.”
Gross, 22, makes his living as a content creator. He has 125,000 followers on Instagram, 48,000 on TikTok and frequently appears shirtless and flexing, wearing shorts that could be mistaken for boxers. “Those are gym shorts!” he protested with a laugh when asked about them.
Alongside secular content about his daily routines and favorite books are videos such as “My Sunday night as ambitious Catholic living in NYC,”“My Ash Wednesday as Catholic man traveling for work” and “Everything I consumed while fasting for Lent (stimulantmaxxing).”
“The pendulum is swinging,” he wrote in the caption of one video. “Gen Z is turning back to God.”
Soon after he started posting about his search for a church, a young woman slid into his DMs on LinkedIn and told him to check out St. Joseph’s Sunday evening Mass. Shortly after his first visit, he abandoned his search for a spiritual home in New York. He had found it.
The 6 p.m. Sunday Mass at St. Joseph’s — or “St. Joe’s,” as its habitués call it — has become a hub for New York City’s young Catholics, its pews full of young women wearing sweater sets and silver cross necklaces and young men with biceps straining against the sleeves of their polo shirts.
“A huge selling point is finding a potential partner,” said Gross, though he was “rolling solo.”
“The joke is that St. Joe’s is the ultimate place to date Catholic in New York because it’s all the young, beautiful people that go there,” said Thomas L., 24, a parishioner who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name and last initial because his work involves sensitive government contracts.
If you want a seat, you’d better get there early. By 5:45 p.m., all 850 seats were occupied. People too late to get standing spots craned their necks from the steps outside.
The Rev. Boniface Endorf, the pastor at St. Joe’s, estimated that attendance had increased by 20 percent in the past six months. From 2021 through 2024, the number of people receiving their first sacraments at Easter — baptism, First Communion or confirmation — remained steady, between 13 and 16 annually. In 2025, 35 people received sacraments. This year, the church is expecting 88.
A year and a half ago, if 60 people stayed for the church’s wine social after a Sunday evening service, it was a good night. These days, they average about 200 people.
So why are young people flocking to St. Joe’s?
“Our culture pushes that the meaning of life is consumerism and career,” Father Endorf said. “And they’re looking for something more than what they can produce and what they can buy.”
Attendees offered a variety of other explanations: Church was a much-needed IRL “third space” for the terminally online; it afforded meaningful connection and the potential to turn those connections into serious relationships; in an ugly and inauthentic world, Catholicism offered beauty and tradition. A few people credited conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death as a catalyst. (Kirk was not Catholic, but some associates of his have said that he was exploring Catholicism before he was killed.)
Father Endorf acknowledged that attendance spiked the weekend after Kirk was fatally shot, but said there hasn’t been sustained interest in or discussion about Kirk among his parishioners since. “The people that we get aren’t all in the Charlie Kirk mold,” he said. “It’s much wider than that.”
It has been a logistical challenge to manage the crowds — adding chairs, training ushers to cram people in — and a spiritual challenge of meeting the moment.