By Rachel Amiri
Jesuit schools have encouraged young people’s growth in the Christian life for generations. But in recent years, two high schools in the USA Central and Southern Province have become evangelizing communities in a new way, accompanying students choosing to enter full communion with the Catholic Church through innovative in-school preparation for and celebrations of the sacraments of initiation. The genesis and success of these Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) programs is a story of collaboration with local dioceses in accompanying young people as they respond to the Lord’s invitation to follow.
“This is where young people meet the Church,” says Fr. Matthew Stewart, SJ, principal of St. Louis University High School (SLUH), which welcomed eight new Catholics in 2024. “Within the Society of Jesus, we’re part of a 500-year-old mission within, as a friend of mine likes to say, Catholic education that began on the shores of the Sea of Galilee 2000 years ago. We’re introducing our boys to this whole beautiful faith tradition that we have.”
Jimmy Mitchell, assistant principal for mission and campus minister at Jesuit High School of Tampa since 2020, agrees that young men are finding themselves drawn in through the life of faith lived at their schools. Since 2010, Tampa Jesuit has welcomed 122 students into full communion with the Catholic Church, most during the past five years.
“There’s a lot of entry points for OCIA on our campus, and I think that’s because we have this really beautiful culture of faith and brotherhood and even conversion,” Mitchell says. “Being really into your faith has become, by the grace of God, a very normal and even at times a very cool thing at Jesuit in Tampa.”
OCIA is the Church’s relatively new name for what many know as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).
In the Jesuit tradition, evangelization is rooted in “proposing, not imposing.” Young men at Tampa Jesuit and SLUH are responding to a call they hear in the context of ordinary moments in the theology classroom, at school liturgies, and in school-sponsored retreats, service-learning opportunities or pilgrimages.
“For Ignatius the whole project is saving souls, it’s bringing people to the Lord,” says Fr. Stewart. “So, there’s a sense in which Jesuit education, from the mind of the founder, is not necessarily to convert or proselytize, but to witness to the faith in a way that we can have this multiplier effect.”
Travis Luth, a sophomore at SLUH, says that becoming Catholic wasn’t on his radar when he applied to the school. But he paid attention when his freshman theology teacher, Jesuit regent Justin Kelley, SJ, invited the class to eucharistic adoration. He had an “overwhelming” experience of God’s presence in the chapel during adoration.
“That really brought the Catholic faith into my point of view, and I ended up going to more morning Masses. I became really interested, almost fell in love with Catholicism,” said Luth, who would ask Kelley to be his sponsor in OCIA. He now regularly attends Mass and has connected with his grandfather over their shared faith, but says the experience at SLUH has been key.
“The school really helps me, is essential to my faith right now,” he said.
Another SLUH student, Joe Coovert, found his own interest in Catholicism growing during school Mass and theology classes. He started attending the OCIA program after learning about it from Dick Wehner, a long-time theology teacher at the school.
“What really attracted me to the Church was the set of values that Catholics use themselves in their everyday decisions, trying to live in God’s image,” says Coovert. He also found the sense of community in the Church attractive – both at school and in his experiences of Mass in his parish.
But being able to complete his formation while at school was pivotal for him. “Being around other high schoolers, it makes it really a shared experience, and having my sponsor at SLUH was so super helpful and definitely encouraging,” he said.
At Jesuit High School in Tampa, Jesuits and faculty have supported students’ formation in OCIA on campus for over a decade. A handful of students entered full communion with the Catholic Church in 2010 under Fr. Richard Hermes, SJ, past president of the school, with special permission of Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg. In 2013, Fr. Patrick Hough, SJ, and Rania Henry, head of the theology department, launched an RCIA program.
But interest has exploded in recent years.
Mitchell sees a generational openness to conversion among students. “When they were exposed to the Mass at Jesuit, they said, ‘I want this, I believe this, this is what I want to build my life on,’” said Mitchell, who has been responsible for the program since 2020.
Young men interested in entering the Catholic Church meet each week in a small group with faculty members who lead them through the process. Older students and alumni, as well as teachers and staff, have served as students’ sponsors.
At Tampa Jesuit, the number of students involved in the OCIA program is growing alongside participation in discipleship groups, daily prayer, retreats and summer pilgrimages. Mitchell also points to the daily convocation in the Chapel of the Holy Cross, where students start each morning in prayer and listening to a reflection from community members and alumni, as pivotal.
“The beauty of the chapel, the consistency of those convocations, the solidness of our theology department, the intensity of our retreats, and again the vision, language and culture that’s built from our leadership on down, are all really integrated in a way that has led to this tipping point,” he says.
“I am utterly convinced that all of this is the work of God,” says Mitchell.
Accompaniment Is Key
Justin Kelley, SJ, a Jesuit regent at SLUH and Jesuit Tampa alumnus, sees in his students a hunger for stability and something bigger than themselves.
“The way that I describe their lives is ‘liquid,’ everything is constantly in transition, passing, unstable,” says Kelley. “I think they feel so lost, and I think they feel found in the Catholic Church.”
In 2024, eight SLUH students participated in the school’s first RCIA program, now called OCIA. They received the sacraments of initiation from their principal, Fr. Stewart, at an all-school Mass of Praise and Gratitude in May.
Students have often approached teachers and campus ministers to request the sacraments after learning about them, says Lindsay Kelleher, SLUH theology department chair. In the past, teachers connected students who expressed interest to their local parishes, the preferred context for initiation into the Catholic Church. But they often faced hurdles. Faculty saw an opportunity to offer more holistic support to students seeking to become Catholic by offering school-based formation.
Knowing this was possible, Kelley took the lead in 2023 in developing a sacramental preparation program for students as the theology department teachers and campus ministers identified and contacted students who had previously expressed interest in entering the Church.
“It was one of those things that was clearly from the Holy Spirit, because all of the obstacles cleared,” said Fr. Stewart of Kelley’s partnership with the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
The OCIA programs, developed with the support and encouragement of the local dioceses in Tampa and St. Louis, are suited both to adolescents’ unique needs and fit with the strong theological formation the schools already offer in the classroom.
Key to those responsible for the formation of new Catholic Christians in the schools’ OCIA programs is respecting the maturity and freedom of students to decide on their own whether to become Catholic, while offering support and encouragement along the way.
At SLUH, teachers and faculty members served as sponsors. “That relationship of accompaniment was key, enabling us to talk through a lot of the pieces of the preparations that students were undertaking,” said Lindsay Kelleher, said Lindsay Kelleher, theology department chair. Through informal meetings in the hallway or during lunch, sponsors helped troubleshoot students’ unique needs, from figuring out how to get to Sunday Mass to having conversations with parents or answering thorny questions.
At Tampa Jesuit, Mitchell says, walking with students in their daily struggles and growth in Christian maturity frames their student formation program. “There’s a real sense of accompaniment when they open every single meeting with prayer and a spiritual inventory. Everybody’s going around and talking about their own joys and struggles, their own discernment process and prayer life,” he says.
Accompanying young people as they take the next steps on their faith journeys has a ripple effect in the lives of students and their school communities.
“Accompaniment is not only built into the RCIA process, it’s now so built into campus ministry in the school that there’s not a single student who doesn’t at some point in their four years feel like there’s an adult who is like an older brother in the faith, or even like a spiritual father or mother,” he says.
Students have assumed leadership roles in peer ministry, sharing about their own joys and struggles, says Mitchell, transforming the culture into one of missionary discipleship and leading to religious vocations among alumni.
And the communities of both schools look forward and reflect on the joyous campus celebration during the Easter season, held on campus, where they welcome their brothers into the Catholic Church.
“I think it’s a beautiful synergy with the mind and heart of what Ignatius wanted for Jesuit works,” says Fr. Stewart.
Justin Kelley puts it succinctly: “This is what Jesuit education is about, the salvation of souls.”
Featured Photo: Father Matt Stewart, SJ, baptizes St. Louis University High School student Connor McCoy at the 2024 Mass of Praise and Gratitude. Justin Kelley, SJ, is pictured back right.
Photos courtesy St. Louis University High School and Jesuit High School of Tampa.
