Almost a decade ago, I spent months investigating the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, or FOCUS, a national college-outreach and evangelization program that, at the time, was operating on 137 campuses around the country. My three-part series reported on the group’s substantial influence on young people, noted its ties to traditionalist and conservative organizations, and revealed its plans to expand into parishes. Sources told me about the damage FOCUS’s relatively untrained missionaries could do in students’ lives and how the organization was decimating existing campus-ministry programs.
The articles made a splash in Catholic circles, but they did nothing to slow the growth of the organization. Today, FOCUS operates on 213 campuses nationwide, as well as on ten international and ten digital campuses and in more than two dozen parishes. Its budget has exploded from $57 million a year in 2017 to nearly $127 million in 2025, according to its most recent annual report. (By comparison, a similar organization, St. Paul’s Outreach, reports an annual budget of about $15 million.) FOCUS’s impact on the current U.S. Church cannot be overestimated: it claims more than eighty thousand missionary and student alumni, which include one third of all seminarians in the United States today. In 2025, forty-seven bishops attended the organization’s massive SEEK conference.
But not every former FOCUS missionary or student has positive things to say about their experience in the organization. Earlier this fall, on social-media sites hosted by Catholic commentator Chris Damian, more than two hundred former FOCUS missionaries, headquarters employees, and students shared their stories of financial hardship, sexism, racism, unfair labor practices, and mental-health issues resulting from what they describe as a toxic religious environment. Damian interviewed six former FOCUS missionaries, employees, and a student in a series of eight podcast episodes and wrote more than twenty Substack posts about the organization under the heading “Deconstructing FOCUS.”
While some young people reported growing spiritually when they were first involved in FOCUS, which hosts campus Bible studies and an annual conference, many said they eventually found the overzealous and judgmental environment to be stifling and even psychologically harmful. Missionaries and staff of color said they felt tokenized, and were regularly asked to be in organization photos, despite being in a significant minority. At least one woman reported that less qualified male employees made more money than she did; at one time, another woman told Damian, missionary-selection criteria had a lower standard for men. A surprising number of folks said they had left the Catholic Church or organized religion altogether after their experiences in FOCUS.
The gender disparities in the organization were particularly egregious. Men and women received very different messages—while men had cigar parties, women got lectures about how they were responsible for men’s sexual sins. Women were frequently singled out for discipline over their clothing choices. The required “dating fast” for first-year missionaries, who are usually recent college graduates, would ultimately result in what was jokingly referred to as the “dating feast” during year-two training, sometimes leading to quick engagements. Seemingly arbitrary requirements for women to be “emotionally chaste” (the female equivalent of physical chastity for men) restricted nearly all emotional connection, even daydreaming about someone romantically. Many women, in particular, contended that the rules—loosely based on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body—left them emotionally wounded or led to lower self-esteem and even clinical depression.
My earlier reporting had included allegations of elitism, with FOCUS missionaries reaching out to “popular” students, including athletes and those in Greek life, as part of the “Win-Build-Send” model. Former missionaries told Damian that relationships often felt transactional, and some observers compare FOCUS’s financial and membership quotas to a pyramid scheme. Because they were required to fundraise their own salary (in a model borrowed from the evangelical Campus Crusade for Christ, now called “Cru”), former missionaries described spending as much or more time asking friends and family for money as they did evangelizing. Those from lower-income backgrounds or lacking connections with money explained that meeting the fundraising requirements was basically impossible. Previous practices that left missionaries in debt to FOCUS after their years of service have since been changed, more recent alumni said. But a number described living in extreme poverty while working as missionaries, sometimes without enough money for regular meals despite working eighteen-hour days.
For many outside observers, and even some inside the organization, the financial model just doesn’t add up. Missionaries fundraise their salaries, but FOCUS still charges campus ministries about $15,000 per missionary and parishes about $50,000 per missionary to cover training and administrative costs. Employees at its headquarters, called the Denver Support Center, also fundraise their salaries. Even students are encouraged to “fundraise” from family or parish members to pay for their attendance at the SEEK conference. The five-day event starts at $500, not including travel and housing. (For $2,500, “friends and benefactors of FOCUS” can attend SEEK and take advantage of a reserved suite, exclusive events, and cocktail receptions.) Questions about where the $127 million a year in revenue goes is unclear; FOCUS is not required to file the full informational 990 IRS tax form that most nonprofits must, thanks to an exemption for religious organizations, as determined by inclusion in the Official Catholic Directory. In FOCUS’s 2025 annual report, they indicate that expenditures include support-team salaries; campus, parish and other outreach; and expenses for “formative enterprises” such as conferences, missions, summer projects, and retreats. Detailed information about operating expenses and executive salaries that would provide more financial transparency is not provided.
One of the expenditures not listed is a $2.1 million luxury home that the organization purchased for FOCUS founder and former CEO Curtis Martin in 2025. The nearly five-thousand-square-foot estate is located in “one of Colorado’s most exclusive neighborhoods” and boasts four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen, and outdoor grounds with a saltwater pool, cascading waterfall, spa, built-in firepit, and multiple patios that make for “a true resort-style sanctuary,” according to the listing. Damian confirmed through the deed and voter records that FOCUS paid for the property and that Curtis family members live there. He also confirmed through county property records that Martin sold a $675,000 property this year, has another currently for sale for $800,000, and co-owns a third one with his son, Brock, (who also works for FOCUS) valued at $443,000—for a total of $1.9 million. Records from 2013, the last year for which Martin’s salary was made public, indicate that he was paid $216,000.
FOCUS had the chance to respond to those questions through The Pillar, a Catholic blog run by former Catholic News Agency/EWTN employees J. D. Flynn and Ed Condon. In a post titled, “‘We’re always assessing our culture’—FOCUS defends financial affairs, HR criticisms,” Craig Miller, who heads FOCUS’s fundraising and financial arm and formerly served as FOCUS president, defended the purchase of the home, saying the organization was trying to assist its founder in a “tough” housing market. He said the Martins were unable to arrange financing for a home large enough to entertain benefactors and staff in a location near the headquarters, so FOCUS purchased the home and will lease it to the Martins under IRS rules for ministers and parsonages. (The home was purchased two months before Martin stepped down as CEO; he remains on the FOCUS board and in a public-facing founder role.)
Miller also addressed reports of the FOCUS board not responding to allegations of Curtis Martin’s verbal attacks against the now-ex-wife of a Martin family member. The couple’s 2020 marriage dissolution order confirmed abusive behavior by the husband, who also has worked for FOCUS. Miller said he was not able to discuss a “human resources issue,” but said the board came down on Curtis Martin’s side of the “differing accounts” of the alleged verbal attack. In its article allowing FOCUS spokespersons to defend the organization, The Pillar did not disclose that FOCUS’s SEEK conference had been a sponsor of a Pillar podcast and that The Pillar’s editor-in-chief had spoken at the event.
Shortly after Damian’s social-media posts, FOCUS announced its new CEO, Jonathan Reyes, who is connected to several Catholic organizations, including the Knights of Columbus, Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, and the Augustine Institute of Denver. He has also worked for Catholic Charities of Denver and the U.S. bishops’ conference. Damian notes that Reyes was on the board when the verbal-attack allegations against Curtis Martin were made, yet he hopes for possible change in the organization under Reyes. “I would love for FOCUS to take accountability, and acknowledge and reach out to people who have publicly said they have been harmed,” Damian told me. “At the very least, sharing these stories puts these institutions on notice that they can no longer expect silence from people who are suffering.”
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