Gas diffusivity measurements in opaque porous media were performed using nuclear magnetic resonance. An optimized pulsed-field gradient stimulated echo method with free volume selection was used to investigate the propagator of thermally polarized methane gas within commercial monolithic catalyst supports. Since signal losses due to T-2 relaxation were minimized by using a short echo time, diffusion processes could be characterized by the measured propagator functions and effective diffusion coefficients were determined for a broad range of observation times and in different spatial directions. The study of this noninvasive characterization of gas diffusion found a clear effect of the monolith type and its pore size and coating on the effective gas diffusion coefficient and the apparent tortuosity for a given observation time.