More than eight in 10 US Catholics have favourable impression of Pope Leo XIV

Catholics who identity as Democrats were slightly more likely to approve of Pope Leo than their Republican co-religionists, by a margin of 89 per cent to 84 per cent.

A survey from the Pew Research Center found that 84 per cent of all US Catholics have a favourable impression of Pope Leo XIV.

Among Catholics who attend Mass weekly or more often, his approval rating rises to 95 per cent. Just 77 per cent of Catholics who seldom or never attend Mass expressed a positive opinion of the Pope, while four per cent of Catholics said they have an unfavourable opinion of the Pope and 11 per cent indicated they had never heard of him.

These numbers are similar to those expressed about Pope Francis during the early years of his pontificate.

Among non-Catholics, 31 per cent said they had never heard of Pope Leo but 56 per cent expressed a positive opinion of him.

However, only 7 per cent of Catholics told Pew that they know a great deal about the pope, compared to 25 per cent who answered they know “nothing at all” about Pope Leo while 67 per cent indicated they the “know a little” about him.

One-third of US Catholics said they expect Leo to be “pretty similar to Pope Francis” while 13 per cent thought he would be “pretty different” from his predecessor. Slightly more than half said they did not know enough to answer. Knowledge, however, did not correlate with enthusiasm as 36 per cent of US Catholics said they were “very” or “extremely” excited about having a pope born in the US and another 40 per cent said they were “somewhat excited” about having a US-born pontiff.

Catholics who identity as Democrats were slightly more likely to approve of Pope Leo than their Republican co-religionists, by a margin of 89 per cent to 84 per cent. Only one per cent of Catholic Democrats expressed a negative opinion of the Pope while six per cent of Republican Catholics did.

The survey interviewed 9,916 US adults, including 1,849 Catholics, from 8 July to 3 August. The margin of error in the survey is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

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