Passengers peering out airplane windows during a nighttime descent into Las Vegas can attest to how far its suburbs sprawl into the vast Mojave Desert. Nearly three million people make their home here.
Still, it is the luster of the casinos on Las Vegas Boulevard, better known as the Strip, that arrests the eyes. Las Vegas typically lures more than four million visitors a year, and since 2023, arguably the brightest spot in the City of Lights is the Sphere, a music and entertainment arena with a wraparound interior screen that offers 17,600 patrons an immersive audio and visual experience.
Walk down the Strip at midnight, and you will see musicians banging on drums and blowing tunes on brass instruments while visitors stumble up and down the crowded sidewalks. Vehicles advertising escort services and live entertainment join the late-night traffic, making their way past the MGM, the Bellagio, the Flamingo and Paris Las Vegas.
Just past the Wynn and the Encore, tourists may notice a modest, A-frame church dwarfed by the buildings that surround it. Built in 1963, Guardian Angel Cathedral is the mother church of the Archdiocese of Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing dioceses in the United States. Over the last 30 years, the archdiocese has seen the number of registered Catholics triple, from 250,000 in 1995 to 750,000 in 2025.
“In no small measure, the Las Vegas Strip is one of the reasons why the church has burgeoned here,” Archbishop George Leo Thomas told America. “People react against what they see at the Strip. St. Paul’s quote—‘Where sin is present, grace abounds’—I think that’s what’s happened. I think the carnality of the Strip, the secularity of the Strip, has driven people into the arms of the church, into the heart of the church.”
But there are a number of other reasons, he said, that throughout the archdiocese’s 38 parishes, it is common for Sunday Masses to be standing room only. Another is that the growth of the church mirrors the growth of the metropolitan area, which grew from 1.1 million people in 1995 to 2.4 million in 2025. As many as 50,000 people move to the area from California alone each year, drawn by the lack of state income tax, more affordable housing and a decent job market.
At St. Anne’s, a predominantly Latino parish in the city of Las Vegas, priests celebrate nine Masses each weekend to accommodate its 10,000 registered families. The parish also celebrated 1,500 first Communions this year, and clergy baptize about 30 babies each weekend. Archbishop Thomas anointed more than 300 teenagers during the confirmation ceremony at the church in April.
Seeking New Vocations
Given the rapid growth, the archbishop has prioritized encouraging new priestly vocations since being appointed to the see in 2018. At the time of his appointment, there were three seminarians. Today there are 17. Archbishop Thomas also reported that there are 30 men actively discerning the priesthood in the archdiocese.
Like many Las Vegas residents, seminarians may not be from the city. Gino Esposito, for example, is from Connecticut, and he received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina. He was a member of the wrestling team there and, on a whim, he reached out to Archbishop Thomas to ask if they could meet when his team was traveling to Las Vegas for a tournament.
“I sent the email but didn’t expect a response,” Mr. Esposito said. “Two hours later he got back to me: ‘Let’s make it happen.’”
During a break in the tournament, his teammates went to the Strip, but Mr. Esposito met with the archbishop. During their 90-minute meeting, Archbishop Thomas asked if he had ever considered becoming a priest.
“At this time, there’s like a zero percent chance of me being a priest,” Mr. Esposito said, describing his response at that time. “The thought had never crossed my mind. It wasn’t on the table.”
But they stayed in touch and, sure enough, Mr. Esposito felt the call 10 months later. He was not sure what diocese to join, but he visited some of the parishes in Las Vegas on a subsequent trip and saw the fervent faith of the people. And he saw they needed priests.
“It got to a point where I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this is where God wanted me to come,” Mr. Esposito said. “Despite that I don’t have any family out here, and I didn’t know a single person—besides the archbishop.”
This summer, he helped out at St. Francis of Assisi in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb. The parish has more than 10,000 registered families. The current church can accommodate 900 people, but it will eventually seat 1,500. St. Francis is also building a small chapel, which will be named for St. Clare.
Each building on the capacious campus is named after a Franciscan saint. The school, for example, is St. Anthony of Padua. It serves students in pre-K through eighth grade, and there is a St. Damiano cross in every classroom.
A Las Vegas Legacy
Father John T. Assalone, the pastor at St. Francis, brings years of experience in the entertainment industry to his ministry. A native of Long Island, N.Y., he was ordained at 46, but before he felt the call he worked in Hollywood and later was the executive director of entertainment at the MGM Grand Casino Hotel in Las Vegas. The connections he made on the Strip have helped produce some generous donors to the parish.
“Vegas is a very large city, but it’s still a very small town,” Father Assalone said.
Many casino founders and executives also helped build Bishop Gorman High School, which moved to its current location from the east side of Las Vegas 17 years ago. The football field, for example, is named after the Fertitta family, owners of Station Casinos.
John Kilduff, the president of the school, explained that the previous location was built on seven acres. Now the campus extends over 52 acres. More than $150 million has been invested in the property, which offers the school’s 1,500 students amenities—like lecture halls, practice fields and a student union—that are more common at the university level.
“Living in Vegas, you know, you can go to the Strip, but you’re not required,” quipped Tracy Goode, principal of Bishop Gorman. “We’re a separate community.”
Generations from the same families have been educated at the school, which started serving students in 1954. It is named after Bishop Thomas K. Gorman, who became the first bishop of the Diocese of Reno in 1931. That became the Diocese of Reno-Las Vegas in 1976, and the Holy See created separate dioceses—Reno and Las Vegas—in 1995. Pope Francis elevated Las Vegas to an archdiocese in 2023.
Catholic education has played a central role in the success of the archdiocese. Catherine Thompson, superintendent of Catholic schools in Las Vegas, said enrollment went up during the pandemic. Las Vegas Catholic schools offered in-person classes when public schools did not, and she estimated that 95 percent of the new students stayed. Many archdiocesan schools that prepare students for Bishop Gorman have waiting lists.
Yet while some schools are expanding, Ms. Thompson acknowledged that others have closed. St. Anne’s, the vibrant parish previously mentioned, had to close its school earlier this year. And St. Christopher’s, in North Las Vegas, closed its school in part due to the pandemic. Ms. Thompson explained that while the archdiocese has an operating budget for tuition assistance, the state has limited tax credits for private education in recent years. Lack of state funding had an acute impact on urban schools like St. Christopher’s and St. Anne’s.
A Better Future
Both St. Anne’s and St. Christopher’s parishes serve working-class Latino families. St. Christopher’s is located in a city known for its immigrant community. The parish confirmed 260 teenagers this year and baptizes 10 to 20 babies each weekend, according to Deacon José Rodríguez. Parishioners come from Mexico, Central America and even further south, like Venezuela, he said.
Each weekend, there are five Spanish-language Masses and two in English. But sometimes, Mr. Rodriguez said, Spanish speakers attend the English-language Mass because they can get a seat. After the school closed, the parish began using its classrooms for its many groups—like the adult catechumenate, Marriage Encounter and the Charismatic Renewal.
Mr. Rodriguez, who is 73, arrived in Las Vegas 50 years ago. He worked almost 40 years as a baker at the Mirage and retired when he was 66. He has been a deacon for 14 years but does not plan to stop serving the church any time soon.
“My thinking is that it’s the Holy Spirit who decides when we retire,” he said, crediting his wife for his youthful disposition.
Father Miguel Rolland, the pastor, first arrived at the parish in 2018. He is an American priest who speaks English with the inflection of a native Spanish speaker, in a gentle, melodic voice. A trained anthropologist, Father Rolland spent many years living in different parts of Mexico as a Dominican friar before being incardinated in Las Vegas.
“All the churches are full, basically. ‘Sin City,’ yes. It’s great. For priests, it’s wonderful—because it means job security,” he joked. “There’s plenty of work here.”
The church building at St. Christopher’s can hold 588, but Father Rolland would like to build a new structure to better accommodate the community. The parish counts on retired priests and Dominican friars to cover its numerous weekend Masses.
“When all of this immigration stuff began, I was afraid we’d lose population,” he said referring to the crackdowns by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiated by the Trump administration. “But on the contrary, they hugged the church like they would the mantle of the Virgin. They are not afraid, and they come. Maybe with one eye over their shoulder.”
Father Rolland explained that for working-class immigrants—gardeners, restaurant and hotel workers, those in housecleaning—the church is “familiar to them because they are a long way from home and it reminds them of their family connections.”
María del Carmen, a St. Christopher parishioner, came to Las Vegas 25 years ago from Puebla in Mexico.
“We came for a better future for our children and for us,” she said. “I found what I was looking for, most of all in this parish: the embrace of family, the advice of the priests, who have helped us.”
It is good medicine, said fellow parishioner Ramona Ramírez, echoing her sentiments.
“When you have your eyes fixed on God, the majesty of Las Vegas means nothing,” she said. “You have your life, your family, your children, formed in the faith. You come to church, and you find your community here.”
Ms. Ramírez moved here with her husband from Guadalajara, in the Mexican state of Jalisco. She is very proud of her hometown, boasting of its mariachi, tamales and tequila. They first lived in a small apartment near Las Vegas Boulevard, and she saw things that shattered stereotypes about the glamour of the city.
“I saw people on the streets. You don’t hear about that. You fall in love with the structures and all of that. In your hometown, you don’t have something that beautiful,” she said. They came searching for the American dream, something short of the rags-to-riches life described in Horatio Alger’s novels. They worked hard and got ahead. But this certainly does not happen for everyone.
“The casinos try to attract you,” Ms. Ramírez said. “They give you a $5 card to gamble with, they have promotions and it’s a temptation. And you can certainly fall. You can fall a long way. People become obsessed and gamble away their paycheck. They even gamble away their homes. I’ve seen all of that.”
Finding Support in the City
Some who wind up homeless struggled with gambling, according to Julia Occhiogrosso, who leads the Las Vegas Catholic Worker. She and her husband, Gary Cavalier, came to the city to start the outreach in the 1980s, and the number of people experiencing homelessness has grown along with the city.
“People who are mentally ill need supportive housing,” Ms. Occhiogrosso said. “You’ll find them in the jails now. That’s how we house mentally ill people.”
The Las Vegas Catholic Worker is in Westside, a neighborhood that used to be racially segregated. One of its houses of hospitality was originally built in 1938 by Leroy and Carrie Christensen, a married couple who used it as their home. Over the years, the family hosted neighborhood events and the home served as a social hub for Black residents in the area. The Catholic Worker is also less than a half a mile north of the Harrison Guest House, where notables like Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr. stayed when the Strip hotels were segregated.
“People come to church here from all over the city,” Mr. Cavalier said, noting several churches in the neighborhood—like St. James Catholic Church—that have historically served Black parishioners. “On Sundays, there’s nowhere to park.”
Driving through the neighborhood, Mr. Cavalier points out where Catholic sisters used to run a day care center, as well as a school that used to serve Black and Paiute Native American children during segregation.
In 1855, nine years before Nevada became a state, Brigham Young sent Mormons to this area. But it was not until 1911 that Las Vegas was incorporated. Nevada outlawed gambling in 1910, but it thrived anyway. In 1931, the state made it legal, the same year construction began on the Hoover Dam.
Some of the streets near the Catholic Worker are lined by people who are homeless, and drug transactions are commonplace nearby. Before the pandemic, Mr. Cavalier said, disability checks could cover rent in low-cost dwellings. But rent in some places doubled from $600 to $1,200. Lack of affordable housing, mental illness and substance abuse are the main drivers of homelessness, he said.
“Sometimes they’ve ruined [family relationships] themselves by stealing from their parents because they have an addiction,” he said. “Sometimes people become homeless because they lose their job. The homeless don’t have anybody on the outside to take care of them.”
The Catholic Worker has volunteers from 14 parishes in the archdiocese, including members of the Knights of Columbus and the Knights of Peter Claver. In a way, that is how Joy Jones got involved.
Credit: J.D. Long García
She suggested the ladies auxiliary at St. James volunteer at the Catholic Worker, but others told her “it was too early!” she laughed. On Thursdays, food line volunteers get started at 6 a.m.
Ms. Jones, a native of New Orleans, did not mind the early start and has been serving regularly for the last three years. She is retired now but first moved to Las Vegas when she was 18.
She serves alongside Mark Kelso, a former Marine, who runs the shower project. Mr. Kelso started volunteering at the Catholic Worker in the 1990s. The shower project involves a semi-truck that has space for people to have private showers. They serve about 40 people each week and offer clients underwear, socks and T-shirts—and any other clothing item that has been donated. They also provide coffee and snacks.
Sack lunches are handed out at homeless encampments on Thursdays. People experiencing homelessness often wait in line for services, Mr. Kelso said, but not in this case.
“The nice thing about that is you get these relationships going, because you have more time to talk to them,” he said. “You’re not in a rush because you’re not trying to get everyone through the line.”
A Place of Outreach
Concern for an individual’s dignity must always be a priority of any program, according to Patti McGuire, who runs the human concerns ministry at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Summerlin, Nev. She moved to Las Vegas with her family from Omaha, Neb., when she was 15.
“We’re such a young city here,” she said, referring to the exponential growth in recent decades. Conversations among parishioners often begin by disclosing their hometowns, Ms. McGuire said. Her ministry, which counts on the support of 120 volunteers, includes a food pantry; it also distributes Christmas gifts for those in need.
Summerlin is about 10 miles from the Strip. Many parishioners at St. Seton are retired—and so are the people her ministry serves.
“People retire, they’re playing pickleball, they’re having a great time. And life is good,” Ms. McGuire said. “But then they become elderly. Their spouse passes away, and their income gets cut in half, and they have medical bills and prescriptions. Then the choice is between food or medication.”
The food pantry, which is supported by parishioners, Jewish Family Services and the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, lets those in need select what food items they would like. They also offer non-food items like laundry detergent, toilet paper and incontinence underwear, which can be expensive. She has met seniors who ration their incontinence briefs and consequently limit their social outings. The pantry helps restore their sense of dignity. The Christmas program, which helps parents provide gifts for their children, also keeps seniors in mind.
“We make sure they can come pick out a gift for themselves, because it might be the only gift they get,” Ms. McGuire said. “We always have cookies and hot chocolate and coffee and all that stuff because we wouldn’t be Catholic without food.”
It may be some distance from the Strip, but there is still gambling at corner casinos in the area, Ms. McGuire said. People who are lonely or have just lost a loved one are particularly susceptible to being lured by the false promise of the casinos, she said.
“This city will suck you dry,” Ms. McGuire said. “It will eat you up and spit you out if you don’t have some grounding.”
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parishioners as well as Catholics across the valley work with Nevadans for the Common Good, most recently organizing for regulation on payday lenders in the state. N.C.G. has also worked to curb child sex trafficking, to improve the state’s poorly rated education system and to advocate for affordable housing. The last effort includes work toward the regulation of vacation rentals, which can drive up the cost of housing.
The cost of housing remains a concern for many. “You could get a job, make a living wage as a pit boss or a server or a housekeeper, and buy a house. That was the American dream” as it once played out in Las Vegas, according to Anna Eng, executive director of N.C.G. “Now the cost of housing going up has changed things. People are having a harder time being able to afford things. This remains a working-class town.”
The culinary union remains a positive force for workers, Ms. Eng said. But she drew a contrast between Portland, Ore., where she grew up, and Las Vegas. In Portland, the city painstakingly preserves historic buildings, but in Las Vegas, when a resort property has served its purpose, “We blow it up and build a big, brand new, shiny edifice. That’s kind of the way we do things here.”
Some things on the Strip have staying power, though, like the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace. Those were the brainchild of Deacon Thomas Roberts, who developed the concept around 1990. He estimated that 80 percent of revenue on the Strip came from gaming at that time. Now he thinks it is more like 20 percent, with the other 80 coming from nongaming offerings, like food, entertainment, sports, shopping and hotels.
But Mr. Roberts, who used to work for the Fertitta family, believes gaming, if offered properly, is an entertainment vehicle. “If you go and have a great dinner, you don’t ask for your money back at the end of it,” he said. Some may gamble irresponsibly, he explained, but most simply see it as entertainment.
The deacon’s career took a somewhat abrupt turn not long after his ordination, when the death of Msgr. Patrick Leary left open the executive director position at Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada. Mr. Roberts came in as an advisor at first. But over time, the board asked him to take the job. That was 12 years ago.
The organization’s budget went from $12 million to $55 million over that span and now serves 4,000 people a day. Mr. Roberts, who stepped down from his position earlier this year, applied concepts from his previous line of work to better serve the marginalized. That includes affinity cards that clients scan when using services, which helps Catholic Charities track their needs.
“Our clients are coming to us for certain resources,” he said. “We may learn what is causing them to be chronically homeless. And then we can identify which of those issues we can focus on and which we can collaborate on with other nonprofits.”
Catholic Charities’ Meals on Wheels program grew from 700 to 2,500 clients during his time with the organization, Mr. Roberts said, adding, “We’re keeping more people in their homes with nutritious foods.”
Home deliveries have also helped identify other issues, like dementia or incontinence. Some clients, Mr. Roberts discovered, were sharing their meals with their pets, so they began giving out pet food, too. As for chronic homelessness, Mr. Roberts identified mental illness as the overall leading cause, connecting it to broken family relationships, gambling and substance addiction.
“It started because they had a mental illness that was left untreated, and that suddenly turned into a vortex of bad things,” he said. “And there’s no shortage of [bad] things here that are open 24 hours.”
Staying Strong
Back at the Guardian Angel Cathedral on the Strip, the scope of the church’s influence in Las Vegas is on display in the life of Ivanka Zrnic, the maintenance director at the cathedral. She came to the United States as a refugee from Croatia in 1998. She was six months pregnant when she arrived with her husband, who had been a prisoner of war.
Catholic Charities had someone there at the airport to greet the family. They had paid for the plane fare, drove them to their apartment and helped them with medical requirements.
“They took really good care of us,” she said.
Ms. Zrnic started as a part-time employee cleaning the bathrooms at the cathedral, but then started helping at the gift shop. She has served under four different bishops. Her husband, Zvonko, works at one of the hotels. “They just call him ‘Z,’” she said
Her two children, Joseph and Andrea, have graduated from college. Ms. Zrnic is one of 11 children and said her siblings are all over the world—from England to the Netherlands to Australia. She goes back to Croatia every two years.
“A lot of people who come here say they didn’t know there was a church on the Strip,” she said of tourists who happen upon the cathedral. “They just see the cross and come in.”
The cathedral, designed by the architect Paul Revere Williams, seats 1,100. It contains stained glass, mosaics and a mural made by Isabel Piczek in the 1970s. Edith Piczek, her sister, designed the large mosaic on the cathedral’s exterior. The Piczek sisters were originally from Hungary.
Lit by the sun, the 12 triangular stained-glass windows tell the story of the destiny of human beings, including an interpretation of the Stations of the Cross. The south sanctuary window is called “The Mask of Reality” and depicts the struggle of human beings to carry out their God-given mission amid distractions. At its base, the artist portrays Las Vegas casinos and hotels. The risen Christ and his mother are at the top. Jesus is calling us to reach up to him. Human beings are caught in the middle.
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Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
This article appears in December 2025.
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