While reporting relatively low levels of attendance at Mass, nearly half of U.S. adults (47%) say they have a personal or family relationship to Catholicism, a new Pew Research Center survey finds.
The survey found that 1 in 5 U.S. adults identify as Catholic, and another 9% say they don’t identify with Catholicism religiously but answered yes when asked “whether ‘aside from religion’ they consider themselves Catholic in any way.”
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Catholic connections
An additional 9% identify as former Catholics, and another 9% say they have a Catholic parent or partner or that they have attended Catholic Mass.
Yet fewer than 3 in 10 adults (28%) of those 20% who identify as Catholic in the religious sense attend Mass at least weekly, and slightly less than a quarter (23%) attend Confession yearly.
The survey was conducted from July 2023 to Feb. 2025, before the April 2025 death of Pope Francis and the election of his successor, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, in May.
Three-year campaign
A 2019 Pew survey inspired U.S. Catholic bishops to redirect their plans for evangelization after it found that only a third of Catholics believed church teaching that Jesus is present in the consecrated bread and wine at Mass, sparking concern among the U.S. Catholic bishops.
Though some academics criticized the survey’s wording and called its finding unreliable, the result prompted the bishops to launch a three-year evangelization campaign in 2022 aimed at drawing more Catholics to Sunday Mass.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Aleja Hertzler-McCain and originally published by Religion News Service.
