Pew Research just released some key information about Catholics who are one of the largest religious groups in the United States, more than any single Protestant denomination. The U.S. has more Catholics than all but three other countries – Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines – according to the Vatican’s Statistical Yearbook of the Church.Here are nine key facts about the U.S. Catholic population.
1. Today, 20% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Catholics, according to our latest survey. This percentage has been generally stable since 2014. But it is slightly lower than in 2007, when 24% of U.S. adults identified as Catholic.
Overall, there were about 262 million adults in the U.S. in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This suggests that there are roughly 52 million Catholic adults nationwide.
2. Most U.S. Catholics are White, but a third are Hispanic. The Catholic population is 57% White, 33% Hispanic, 4% Asian and 2% Black, while 3% are of another race.
3. Catholics tend to be older than Americans overall. Nearly six-in-ten Catholic adults (58%) are ages 50 and older. Among all U.S. adults in the survey, by comparison, 48% fall in this age range.
But Hispanic Catholics tend to be a lot younger than White Catholics. Fewer than half of Hispanic Catholics (43%) are 50 and older, compared with about two-thirds (68%) of White Catholics. And just 14% of Hispanic Catholics are ages 65 and older, versus 38% of White Catholics.
4. Roughly three-in-ten U.S. Catholics (29%) live in the South, while 26% live in the Northeast, 24% in the West and 21% in the Midwest.
5. About a third of U.S. Catholics (32%) have a bachelor’s degree. Another 28% have some college experience but not a bachelor’s degree, and 40% have a high school education or less. This distribution is similar to that of the general adult population.
6. About three-in-ten U.S. Catholics (28%) say they attend Mass weekly or more often. Larger shares of Catholics say they pray on a daily basis (52%) and say religion is very important in their life (46%).
Overall, 20% of U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass weekly and pray daily and consider religion very important in their life. By contrast, 10% of Catholics say they attend Mass a few times a year or less often and pray seldom or never and consider religion not too or not all important in their life.
7. About half of Catholic registered voters (52%) identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, while 44% affiliate with the Democratic Party.8. While the Catholic Church opposes abortion, about six-in-ten Catholics say abortion should be legal. This includes 39% who say it should be legal in most cases and 22% who say it should be legal in all cases. Roughly four-in-ten Catholics say abortion should be illegal in most (28%) or all (11%) cases.
9. Three-quarters of Catholics view Pope Francis favorably, according to our February 2024 survey. That’s a little lower than the 80% of Catholics or more who expressed a positive view of Francis in many previous polls during his papacy, which began in 2013.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/12/9-facts-about-us-catholics/
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