Is There a “Francis Effect” in the United States?

Last updated on: April 12, 2018 at 10:27 am by Andrew Chesnut

Is There a “Francis Effect” in the United States? 2018-04-12T10:27:50-04:00 Andrew Chesnut

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A new poll by Gallup reveals that it is not only the pope’s native Latin America that has not experienced a “Francis effect” but also the U.S., home to the world’s fourth largest Catholic population. During the first couple years of his controversial papacy there were many anecdotal reports of his charisma and popularity leading to greater mass attendance in parishes across the globe, especially in the Americas. However the new Gallup survey shows that if there is any Francis effect at all it’s a negative one. Weekly church attendance among American Catholics has dropped 6 points during a three-year span of Francis’s papacy. Between 2014 and 2017 39% of Catholics reported weekly church attendance while from 2005 to 2008 45% did.

Lest conservative critics of Francis’s pioneering papacy use the Gallup survey as new ammunition against him, declining church attendance among American Catholics is a long-term trend that has developed over the past six decades. In 1955 approximately three-quarters of parishioners reported weekly church attendance. Unfortunately the Gallup poll does not include data on different ethnic and racial groups within American Catholicism, but it does contain intriguing statistics on church attendance by age groups.

The biggest takeaway is that among the five different age groups none contains a majority, more than 50%, that attend church on a weekly basis. While older American Catholics still are the most regular churchgoers, a slight majority, 51%, of those age sixty and over do not attend church on a weekly basis. Even more worrying for the Church is the continuing decline of weekly church attendance among the youngest cohort, age 21 to 29. Since the mid-1950s church attendance among Catholics in their twenties has plummeted from 73% to 25% with also a slight drop during the papacy of Francis.

For a church that has avoided the type of precipitous decline experienced by mainline American Protestantism, such as Presbyterians and Methodists, the falling attendance rates among twenty-something Catholics does not bode well for the future. The one bright spot among the five age groups are parishioners in their thirties who as a group actually increased their attendance at weekly services over the past decade from 40% between 2005 and 2008 to 43% from 2014 to 2017.

Beyond church attendance, Catholicism in the U.S. is in better shape than both mainline American Protestantism and the Church in Latin America, which has continued to lose members under Pope Francis’s watch. From 1955 to the present, the percentage of Americans identifying as Catholic has dropped only 2 points, from 24% to 22%. However, the relative stability of the Church compared to its competitors isn’t due to more effective strategies of pastoral outreach and retention but rather rather the rapid growth of the Latinx population, 55% of whom are Catholic.

Latinx currently constitute 34% of Church membership in the U.S., a figure that will only increase in the near future. But like their African-American and Euro-American peers, Millennial Latinx are in significant numbers opting out of organized religion. While 35% of all American Millennials are religious nones, 31% of Latinx are religiously unaffiliated. For the Church in the U.S. to remain relevant and avoid the type of decline taking place in Latin America and Europe, it will need to develop strategies that go beyond relying on papal charisma and popularity.

About Andrew Chesnut

Dr. R. Andrew Chesnut earned his Ph.D degree in Latin American History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995 and joined the History Department faculty at the University of Houston in 1997. He quickly became an internationally recognized expert on Latin American religious history Professor Chesnut was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Bishop Walter Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at VCU in 2008. The chair was established as the Most Rev. Walter F. Sullivan was nearing retirement as the 11th bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond to honor his nearly thirty years of service. For Professor Chesnut the chair became a unique opportunity to develop Catholic studies in a global context and at a large public university. Professor Chesnut’s early work, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty (Rutgers University Press, 1997), traces the meteroric rise of Pentecostalism among the popular classes in Brazil following the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church. His second book, Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy (Oxford University Press, 2003) focuses on the three groups that have prospered most in the region’s pluralist landscape, Protestant Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African disasporic religions (e.g., Brazilian Candomble and Haitian Vodou). Professor Chesnut's most recent book is Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press, 2025). It is the first in-depth study of the Mexican folk saint in English and has received widespread media coverage. You can read more about the author here.

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