In advance of the Pope’s arrival in the United States, Pew Research Center released a summary of data collected in 2014 regarding the current state of the Catholic Church here.
They note what many of us already know, the face of the Church is changing. They write, “Today, immigrants make up a considerable share of Catholics, and many are Hispanic. At the same time, there has been a regional shift, from the Northeast (long home to a large percentage of the Catholic faithful) and Midwest to the Western and Southern parts of the U.S.”
Here’s a few other interesting points from the report:
- The three cities that Pope Francis is visiting this month – Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia – vary in terms of their Catholic makeup. Fully one-third of people in the New York City metropolitan area identify as Catholic (33%), compared with about a quarter of Philadelphians (26%). Roughly one-in-five Washington- area residents are Catholic (19%).
- Over the last several years, the Catholic population in the U.S. has shifted somewhat from the Northeast and Midwest toward the South and West regions of the country. Catholics still are more heavily concentrated in the Northeast than are Americans overall (26% vs. 18%). But between 2007 and 2014, the shares of U.S. Catholics living in the Northeast and Midwest have each fallen by 3 percentage points (from 29% to 26% and from 24% to 21%, respectively). And the shares living in the South and West have each increased by 3 points (from 24% to 27% and from 23% to 26%, respectively).
- American Catholics are aging. The median age of Catholic adults in the U.S. is 49 years old – four years older than it was in 2007. Catholics are significantly older than members of non-Christian faiths (40) and people who are not affiliated with any religion (36).
Read the entire fact sheet from Pew here.
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