Catholicism’s roots in the United States run deep. Nearly half of U.S. adults (47%) claim some connection to the Catholic faith. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that:
- 20% of U.S. adults are Catholics: They say they are Catholic when asked about their present religion.
- 9% of U.S adults are “cultural Catholics”: They don’t identify with Catholicism religiously, but they say “yes” when asked whether “aside from religion” they consider themselves Catholic in any way (for example, ethnically, culturally, or because of their family background).
- 9% are former Catholics: They neither identify as Catholic religiously nor consider themselves culturally Catholic, but they say they were raised in the Catholic faith.
- 9% are connected to Catholicism in other ways: They are not Catholic, culturally Catholic or formerly Catholic, but they have a Catholic parent, spouse or partner or they say “yes” when asked if they ever attend Catholic Mass.1
Among the 20% of U.S. adults who are Catholic, some are deeply observant. For example:
- 50% say they pray daily.
- 28% attend Mass at least weekly.
- 23% go to confession with a Catholic priest at least once a year.
Altogether, 13% of American Catholics say they do all three of these things.
On the other hand, many U.S. Catholics are relatively nonobservant. For instance:
- 22% seldom or never pray.
- 40% seldom or never attend Mass.
- 47% never go to confession with a Catholic priest.
In total, 13% of U.S. Catholics by religion seldom or never pray and seldom or never attend Mass and never go to confession.
The largest share of Catholics (74%) fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum of observance. They may pray. They may attend Mass. They may go to confession. But they don’t regularly do all three (pray daily, attend Mass weekly and go to confession annually).2
These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted Feb. 3-9, 2025, among a nationally representative sample of 9,544 U.S. adults, including 1,787 Catholics. The survey was designed to explore Catholic life in the United States. It was completed prior to the hospitalization of Pope Francis on Feb. 14 and his death in April, and well before the conclave that elected his successor, Pope Leo XIV.
Throughout this report, “Catholics” refers to U.S. adults who say they are Catholic when asked about their present religion, regardless of their level of observance. The terms “cultural Catholic,” “former Catholic” and “other connections to Catholicism” refer to people who do not consider Catholicism to be their religion but who have other connections to Catholic life.
The Center previously released two reports based on the same survey, one focusing on U.S. Catholics’ opinions about Francis and another on what Catholics say they want from the church.
The rest of this Overview covers:
- Essentials of Catholic identity
- Catholic parish life
- Converts to Catholicism
- Hispanic Catholics
- ‘Cultural Catholics’
- Leaving Catholicism
- Other key findings
Essentials of Catholic identity
The survey asked American Catholics what “being Catholic” means to them. It offered 14 items and asked respondents to say whether each one is an “essential,” an “important but not essential,” or “not an important” part of what being Catholic means to them.
In response, the item most commonly selected as essential was “having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Overall, 69% of U.S. Catholics say having a personal relationship with Jesus is an essential part of what being Catholic means to them, while 21% say it is important but not essential, and 8% say it’s not an important part of their Catholic identity.
Other frequently selected essential items are:
- Devotion to the Virgin Mary (50% of Catholics say this is an essential part of what being Catholic means to them)
- Working to help the poor and needy (47%)
- Receiving the Eucharist (46%)
Differences by Mass attendance
On many questions, the survey finds large differences between Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week and those who don’t.
Roughly three-in-ten Catholics say they attend Mass weekly. Compared with Catholics who go less frequently, they are more likely to express support for the church’s teachings on a variety of issues, more involved in their parishes, and more likely to say they participate in a variety of distinctively Catholic practices, such as praying the rosary or practicing devotions to Mary or the saints.
Additionally, Catholics who attend Mass weekly are more likely than those who go less often to affirm that all 14 items offered in the survey are essential to their Catholic identity. For instance, 91% of weekly Mass-attending Catholics say having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is essential to what being Catholic means to them, compared with 60% of Catholics who attend Mass less often. And 83% of weekly Mass attenders say that receiving the Eucharist is essential, compared with 32% of Catholics who attend Mass less often.
Catholic parish life
A large majority of U.S. Catholics express favorable views of their parish priests. Overall, 71% view their priests favorably, compared with 4% who view them unfavorably. About one-in-ten Catholics say they “don’t know enough” to express an opinion about their parish priests, and 14% were not asked the question because they said they don’t go to Mass.
Among Catholics who attend Mass weekly, 95% express a favorable view of their parish priests.
About half of weekly Mass attenders say they participate at least yearly in parish activities outside of Mass (such as prayer groups, Eucharistic adoration or community meals) or that they volunteer at their parish (for example, as an usher, lector or extraordinary minister of the Eucharist).
Converts to Catholicism
Overall, 1.5% of U.S. adults are converts to Catholicism. That is, they say they are Catholics when asked about their present religion, but – when asked in a separate question about the religion in which they were raised – they say they were not raised Catholic.3
Catholic converts tend to be at least as religiously active as “cradle Catholics” (by which we mean adults who were raised Catholic and currently identify as Catholic). In some ways, converts to the faith exhibit higher rates of religiousness than cradle Catholics do.
For instance, the share who say they attend Mass at least weekly is 10 percentage points higher among converts than among cradle Catholics (38% vs. 28%). Converts also are far more likely than cradle Catholics to say they receive Communion every time when they attend Mass (58% vs. 34%).
On the other hand, the shares of converts saying they pray every day and go to confession at least once a year is about the same as among cradle Catholics.
The survey asked converts to Catholicism to explain, in their own words, the main reason why they became Catholics. The most commonly offered reason is marriage: 49% of converts say they became Catholic because of a spouse or partner, and/or to get married in the church.
(The 2025 survey included 148 interviews with converts to Catholicism, and results based on this relatively small sample of converts have a correspondingly large margin of error: plus or minus 10.1 percentage points.)
Catholic connections among Hispanics
The survey shows that Hispanic Catholics participate in a variety of devotional practices at above-average rates. For instance,
- 56% of Hispanic Catholics wear or carry religious items at least monthly.
- 46% participate in devotions to the Virgin Mary or other saints at least monthly.
- 37% pray the rosary at least monthly.
- 26% light candles or incense for spiritual or religious reasons at least monthly.
Close ties to Catholicism are more common among Hispanics than among other racial and ethnic groups. In the 2025 survey, fully 40% of Hispanic respondents are Catholic by religion. That number has been declining in recent years, but it is still at least double the shares of White, Black and Asian Americans who are Catholic.
An additional 15% of Hispanics are “cultural Catholics.” They do not say they are Catholic when asked about their religion; instead, they identify religiously with something other than Catholicism or with no religion. But they say “yes” when asked whether they think of themselves as Catholic “aside from religion” (e.g., ethnically, culturally, or because of their family background). Overall, 12% of U.S. Hispanics are “cultural Catholics” who were raised Catholic or had a Catholic parent.
Roughly one-in-five Hispanics are “former Catholics” (18%). They say they were raised Catholic, but they do not identify as Catholic today, either religiously or aside from religion.
Finally, 9% of Hispanics have other Catholic connections. They don’t describe themselves as cultural or former Catholics, but they do have a Catholic parent, spouse or partner, or they say “yes” when asked if they ever attend Mass.
For more information on the beliefs and practices of Hispanic Catholics, refer to Chapter 4. For additional information about the demographics of Hispanic Catholics, refer to “10 facts about U.S. Catholics.”
Cultural Catholics
Among the 9% of U.S. adults categorized as cultural Catholics – people who do not identify as Catholic religiously but who say “yes” when asked whether they think of themselves as Catholic aside from religion – relatively few indicate that they practice the faith. Indeed, among cultural Catholics:
- 83% say they seldom or never attend Mass.
- 81% say they never go to confession.
Additionally, 85% say they seldom or never practice devotion to the Virgin Mary or to a favored saint. And an identical share say they seldom or never pray the rosary.
This raises the question – in what sense are cultural Catholics actually Catholic? To help provide an answer, the survey asked cultural Catholics, “In your own words, could you please describe in what way you consider yourself Catholic?”
The most common type of answer referred to having some Catholic background, such as having been raised Catholic, having an ethnic connection to Catholicism, or having attended Catholic schools. About one-third of respondents (32%) said this.
Cultural Catholics also cite various other types of family or social relationships with Catholics (such as having Catholic friends or extended family members) as the reason they identify as Catholic aside from religion (27% say this).
Many (23%) also mention Catholic beliefs, teachings or values they like or share. About one-in-ten (12%) mention participating in Catholic practices, such as celebrating holidays.
Leaving Catholicism
Many people who were raised Catholic leave the faith as adults. Indeed, 43% of all U.S. adults who were raised as Catholics no longer identify, religiously, as Catholic today (though some of them still identify as Catholic aside from religion).
The new survey asked people who have left the faith the following question: “Just in your own words, what is the main reason you are no longer Catholic?”
Respondents offer a wide variety of answers, the most common of which relate to disagreements with the church’s teachings. Overall, 18% of U.S. adults who have left Catholicism say that they changed their beliefs or that their values no longer align with the church’s values.
An additional 10% say that although they were raised in the faith, they were never very committed to Catholicism.
Another 9% of U.S. adults who have left Catholicism say they stopped believing in God or in religion more broadly. And 8% cite scandals in the church as the main reason for leaving.
For more on why some people choose to leave the Catholic Church, refer to Chapter 7.
Other key findings
The survey also asked about other topics, including Eucharistic practices, the importance of receiving the anointing of the sick (one of the sacraments “involved in the last rites”), the Traditional Latin Mass, sex abuse scandals in the church, and more. Key findings include:
- 82% of Catholics who go to Mass weekly say they receive Communion every time or most of the time they go.
- 62% of weekly Mass attenders say they prefer to receive Communion in the hand, while 21% prefer to receive on the tongue; the remainder either have no preference or say they don’t receive Communion (and thus were not asked about their preferences).
- 58% of Catholics say it would be extremely or very important to them to receive the anointing of the sick if they were seriously ill.
- 13% of Catholics say they have attended a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) at least once in the last five years, including 2% who say they attend a TLM weekly today.
- 42% of U.S. Catholics say it would bother them either a lot (13%) or a little (29%) if they had a grown child who was not a practicing Catholic; 58% of U.S. Catholics say this would not bother them at all.
- 62% of U.S. Catholics say that reports of sexual abuse and misconduct by priests and bishops reflect “ongoing problems” rather than “things that happened in the past and mostly don’t happen anymore.”
- At the same time, 68% of U.S. Catholics say sexual abuse and misconduct are no more common among Catholic priests and bishops than among leaders in other religious traditions.
For more, jump to the following chapters:
- Chapter 1 – Essentials of Catholic identity
- Chapter 2 – Catholic practices and devotions
- Chapter 3 – Catholic parish life, culture and community
- Chapter 4 – Profile of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S.
- Chapter 5 – Profile of U.S. converts to Catholicism
- Chapter 6 – Views of sexual abuse and misconduct in the Catholic Church
- Chapter 7 – Catholic connections
