“Want prayers? Help with your big questions? Or just want to talk and be listened to?”
The series of questions is posted on the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) website. It is an invitation for college students to walk their faith journey with FOCUS missionaries, who are present at select campuses in the United States.
FOCUS, founded by Curtis Martin in 1998, forms Catholic missionaries rooted in Church teaching, prayer, Scripture and evangelization. Missionaries invite people into life with Christ and walk with them as they grow in faith.
A large team of missionaries in the diocese serve at Ohio State University. Perhaps unbeknownst to many, FOCUS missionaries are also present about an hour-and-a-half northwest at Ohio Northern University (ONU) in Ada, also part of the Diocese of Columbus.
A team of four missionaries at the university are working to bring souls to Christ, one student at a time.
Missionaries first arrived at Ohio Northern in the fall of 2023. Now in its third year at ONU, FOCUS serves as a Catholic presence on campus.
Ohio Northern does not have a Newman Center for Catholic students like some universities. The FOCUS team operates out of Ada Our Lady of Lourdes parish.
“We kind of walked into a university that, I would say, the Catholic club was familiar with FOCUS but not like super, super familiar, and the Catholic club was not thriving in any way, shape or form. It was kind of stagnant,” said Becca Joy Root, who has been a FOCUS missionary at ONU since its inception on campus.
“They didn’t really do much, and there wasn’t much involvement either, and I don’t think a lot of people really knew that ONU Catholic existed.”
The team of FOCUS missionaries was there to change that.
“I think it was within the first like two or three Sundays of us being here on campus, some of the parishioners, they were like, ‘This is the most college students that we have seen since pre-COVID,’ and it truly was the Holy Spirit,” Root affirmed.
This year, between six and eight ONU students are projected to enter the Catholic Church at Our Lady of Lourdes through the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA). Last Easter, four students and an alumnus came into the Church.
“The parish hadn’t had people enter the Church in multiple years – five years – and then, this year, already there’s quite a few people in OCIA from the college as well,” said FOCUS missionary Thomas Watza, who is a former seminarian and in his second year serving at ONU.
The missionary team collaborates with Father Ryan Schmit, pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes.
Holy Hour is offered to students five days a week at the church, Mass is offered four times weekly, and there are three times to receive the sacrament of reconciliation.
Father Schmit was present for the university’s “Welcome Fest,” where student groups on campus set up booths.
He also attends FOCUS events throughout the school year, helping students “see a priest as a normal person and build a relationship with him,” said Sonja Ritze, the FOCUS team director at ONU and in her second year at the university.
Missionaries on campus participate in outreach each week. Outreach includes offering free coffee, engaging students in conversation and forming friendships.
“Last year, I think we really saw an explosion in ONU Catholic and just the community becoming more close-knit, but also people actually knowing that it exists,” Root said.
Missionaries invite students to participate in FOCUS Bible studies. Attendance at Bible studies is on the rise.
Ritze said it is important for students to receive formation but also be equipped for missionary discipleship.
“We’re in a place where we’re seeing students actually go on mission, which is awesome,” she noted.
“We have students leading Bible studies for the first time, like way more than ever before, which is super exciting – starting to invest in their roommates, start to get bought into this idea of actual discipleship and mission, which has been really cool.
“When they come on mission with us, we can reach that many more souls, because there’s more of us on the ground.”
FOCUS missionaries attribute much of the success to being close in age to students. They can enter students’ lives in a way that a campus minister might be unable to.
“I get to have normal day-to-day life interactions with a lot of the students or the guys I get to walk with,” Watza said. “It’s not just like Bible studies and discipleships and things like that, which are beautiful, but it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s just go play sports, or just come over, have breakfast with me.’”
On a typical weekday, Watza added, he might go to the library and encounter students there. He explained that he is part of students’ daily lives in a way that “feels very authentic.”
Root said the FOCUS discipleship model is entirely based on friendship.
“We get to spend so much time with the students and just enter into very, very, very normal life with them, which is really beautiful,” she noted. “I think being similar in age is super helpful in that, but then, we also get to meet their friends, and they get to meet ours, and things like that.”
Many students at ONU, Ritze added, are from small towns and do not have other youth in their home parishes. The missionaries help students learn how to be missionary disciples in daily life, which they can implement back home.
“The things that we do are maybe pretty ordinary,” Ritze explained. “What would it look like for one day, when you’re in the parish, to invite someone to have breakfast after Mass? Or what would it look like for you to go to your co-worker’s kid’s soccer game with them, to just spend time with them?
“These little ways that we can witness to each other, and hopefully, make it more something that they could see themselves doing for the rest of their lives.”
Ultimately, the FOCUS missionaries know it is the Lord Whose hand is at work. The missionaries see Christ working in significant and subtle ways.
“It’s a great gift to see those big moments, like baptisms, but also, the small moments of like someone actually understanding something for the first time, or even just little things like our students showing up to a daily Mass,” Ritze said.
“They’re just such big wins.”
