A recent study by the Pew Research Center on religion in the US shows that the precipitous decline in the Catholic share of the population that was experienced in the early 2000s through to the early 2010s has more or less levelled off over the last decade.
However, that seemingly "good news" is offset by the fact that the proportion of Hispanic Catholics, often seen as a bulwark for maintaining Catholic numbers in the US, has reduced far more than was expected.
In 2014, Catholics made up 21 per cent of the US population. In 2023-24, Catholics still make up 19 per cent of the population. But while the percentage of the White, Black and Asian adults in the United States who identify as Catholic has remained relatively steady since 2007, the percentage of Hispanic adults who identify as Catholic has steeply declined.
