The founder of Catholics Come Home, Tom Peterson, has committed his life to sharing the beauty of the Catholic faith and to bringing people closer to Christ.

“It’s the number one mission of the Church. It’s the reason we exist as a Church: to evangelize the world. We’re called, and this is a phrase we came up with, ‘to help love souls to heaven,’” says Peterson.

Peterson, however, remembers the days when he would describe himself as a lukewarm Catholic. A highly successful ad representative, he says that although he never missed Sunday Mass, he was never fully engaged in it.

 “I was living in that gray area, where I went to Mass on Sundays. Sometimes, I paid close attention; sometimes I didn’t. But then the rest of the week, I was a businessman or I was a teenager or I was a college kid or whatever,” he says. “I was distracted from my faith by goals and pursuits and worldly stuff.”

Peterson says that changed when he attended a men’s retreat at his home parish in Arizona in 1997. There, he had a transformative encounter with the Holy Spirit.

 “I was knocked to the floor by the Holy Spirit, and He started talking to my heart,” he says.

Ironically, Peterson says it was a retreat to which he had been invited several times before, but that year, he couldn’t find an excuse not to attend. The retreat included charismatic prayer, with which he was familiar because his parents were involved in the charismatic movement.

“I’m sitting at a distance, looking at these guys and Father talking to them, and my eyes darted to the right, and I saw an empty chair, and I hear God say, ‘There’s an empty chair if you want it,’” he recalls.

He accepted God’s invitation and says when the men were asked if they wanted to be prayed over, his was the first hand up. He says he felt the power of the Holy Spirit come over him.

“That was the first and only time in my life I went down, just like you see on TV or at certain churches,” he says.

His life would never be the same.

“I changed instantly like St. Paul being knocked off the horse. And I started praying, ‘Lord, what do you want me to do?’” he says.

He says the answer came through two dreams. In one, he was making the sign of the cross on a baby’s forehead, and in the other, he was using cameras in relation to the Church. He says a priest helped him understand their meaning.

“He said, ‘God is calling you to use your talents in advertising to serve in pro-life and in evangelization.’ And from that day forward, my apostolate was born,” he says.

The result was VirtueMedia, which promotes the sanctity of human life, and Catholics Come Home, dedicated to bringing disenfranchised Catholics back to the Church.

“I had done marketing and advertising, and I was beginning to do commercials, so I wasn’t afraid to use my talents that God had given me,” he says. 

It was the time of St. John Paul II’s New Evangelization, which invited Catholics to renew their relationship with Christ and His Church and to reach out to others, most especially those who had fallen away from their faith.

“Me, as an advertising guy, I find a need, I fill it. I said the need is that these people need to hear the Gospel message in secular media. They need to be invited home. Pope John Paul II is asking us to do that. I’ve got unique talents in this area. I’m going to do it,” he says. “I had no donors. I had no help. I took money out of my family’s bank account and started doing it.”

His beginnings were in the Diocese of Phoenix, which asked him to help with a program there, but word of its success quickly spread.

“It got so big and so captivating that I ended up giving up my job and doing this full time, still working with just one or two small clients to pay the bills because it was, like, for this, I was born. I knew it,” he says.

According to Catholics Come Home, 90% of fallen-away Catholics say they would come home if invited back by a friend, felt welcomed and connected to a community, and found ministries that connect to them and their family.

Peterson says reaching inactive Catholics begins with prayer.

“I learned it’s easy to evangelize. You just ask people, ‘Can I pray for you?’ You listen to them and see what their problems are and say, ‘Can I pray for you?’ And if they say, ‘No, I’m not comfortable with that,’ you say, ‘OK, I’ll pray for you at home.’ But the best thing to do is to pray with them right then and be a source of light.”

The apostolate also shares the light of Christ on a broader level, using television, streaming platforms, and social media.

“We need to put out the invitation on secular media because that is where everyone is,” he says. “Existing Catholics like [the ads]. They say that makes me feel proud to be Catholic, but former Catholics say I need to come back. ‘I need to get right with God’ is the exact phrase we hear.”

Peterson says it’s then important to remove any impediments to people returning to the faith and to ensure parishes are ready to welcome them back. He shares the story of a woman who called a parish in Arizona, expressing a desire to return to the Church after 40 years away, only to be told that she would have to call back because everyone was in a meeting. Thankfully, Peterson says she was persistent, and the next time she called, the receptionist not only spoke to her but invited her to breakfast.

“The song we all sing as kids is ‘They will know we are Christians by our love.’ Show the world some love,” he says.

Peterson describes the past 30 years as an incredible adventure, one that has helped tens of thousands of people return to the Church. Nonetheless, he says he knows it is really all in God’s hands.

“He invites us to cooperate with Him and to be part of this adventure, and it’s a blessing that we can do that, but ultimately, it’s all up to Him.”