New polls in the US and UK show while regard for the Catholic Church is higher than it was this time last year, Pope Francis has fallen in favour.
The latest Saint Leo University poll shows Americans’ favorable opinion of the Catholic Church in the US remains almost the same as in November, the public’s opinion of the Church’s leader Pope Francis dipped.
The university’s polling institute conducts surveys on topics that affect Catholics and the public’s opinion of Pope Francis.
The February 2020 poll sought opinions from 1,000 respondents from across the US.
The US results
- The favorable opinion – those who responded strongly and somewhat favorably – was recorded at 73.5 percent, up from 69.3 percent in November 2019 and 57.1 percent in April 2019.
- Pope Francis’s favourability rating dropped from 56.6 percent last November to to 52.2 percent in the latest poll.
- In April 2019 poll data shows his favourability rating was 57.9 among US Catholics.
- Past polls show, however, that the pope’s favourability rating can vary significantly from poll to poll.
- As examples, he garnered a favorability rating of 55.6 percent in the February 2019 poll, 44.7 percent in October 2018, and 64.4 percent in August 2018.
- Among Catholics nationally, the pope’s favorable opinion rating is 74.6 percent, down from 78.1 percent in November 2019.
In the UK, St. Mary’s University in London also released new findings on “Catholics in Britain,” last week.
The UK results
- Fifty-nice percent of all Catholics said Francis is doing an “excellent” or “good job” at spreading the Catholic faith.
- Seventy-four 74 percent of weekly Mass goers and 78 percent of Mass goers under the age of thirty said Francis is doing an “excellent” or “good job” at spreading the faith.
- Seventy percent of British Catholics think Francis represents a “change of direction” for the papacy.
- Eighty-seven percent of weekly mass attendees think Francis represents a “change of direction” for the papacy.
Questions about specific issues were also posed in the UK survey. In relation to these, Francis’s least favorable results relate to:
- Addressing the clergy sex abuse scandals, where only where forty-two percent of all Catholics think Francis is doing an excellent or good job at responding to them
- Forty-five percent said the same about his efforts to reform the Vatican and address the concerns of women.
- Sixty percent of Catholics saying he is doing an excellent or good job at standing up for traditional moral values
- Eighty percent of weekly mass going Catholics under the age of 30 say he is doing an excellent or good job at standing up for traditional moral values
The survey was administered to nearly 2,000 Britons, in a country where Catholics make up nearly eight percent of the adult population.
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