A Brief History of Popes in the US

5) But lately, a growing number of millennials have left the Catholic church as they enter adulthood – a problem afflicting almost all religious groups in the state. Here in Billings, the celebration of his visit is as magnetic as it is across the country. Religious identification is also measured as part of Gallup Daily tracking, and interviews with more than 170,000 individuals in 2014 showed a similar 23.9% of national adults interviewed identified as Catholic.

Illinois has a far larger percentage of Catholics, with almost three in 10 saying they identify with Catholicism, according to Pew.

Today, Hispanics are 34 percent of US Catholics, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. It’s 71 percent compared to 61 percent, according to the Catholic research agency, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

3) Like the Hispanic population at large, Catholics are most concentrated in southern California. He celebrated Mass and spoke to audiences at numerous venues, including Tamiani Park in Miami, the University of South Carolina, the Louisiana Superdome, Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit. Here in the USA, they are probably working multiple jobs, Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. “But they’re still Catholic”, she said.

In Gallup’s 2014 tracking data, 32% of Catholics identified as Hispanic, more than double the representation of Hispanics in the US adult population.

64 percent of Hispanics say government should do more to narrow the gap between rich and poor, compared to 50 percent among non-Hispanic whites.

28 – Percent of Illinois residents who say they are Catholic.

Catholics remain an important voting block in American elections, but their influence in the early primary states is mixed.

St. Mary’s Bob O’Conner says the Ten Commandments exemplify the ideas of mercy and human decency – messages he says Pope Francis is effectively spreading throughout the world.

“Pope Francis embodies the culture of encounter”, he said, “the Church without borders where no one is a stranger”.