CNA Staff, Sep 12, 2025 / 14:56 pm (CNA).
A new report from a Pew Research Center survey finds that 8 out of 10 American Catholics view Pope Leo XIV favorably.
According to the report, 84% of U.S. Catholics surveyed say they have a “mostly favorable” view (47%) of the pope or a “very favorable” view (37%) — while only 4% of Catholics view him unfavorably and 11% say they have never heard of him.
Among non-Catholic Americans, more than half of those surveyed (56%) say they view him favorably, while 31% say they have never heard of him.
Pew surveyed 9,916 U.S. adults (which includes 1,849 Catholics) from July 8 through Aug. 3. The margin of error in the survey is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The very same percentage of U.S. Catholics — 84% — viewed Pope Francis favorably in the early months of his pontificate as well, according to the report.
Those who attend Mass more often have a more favorable view of the new pope. Among U.S. Catholics who attend Mass weekly or more often, 95% say they have a favorable view. Of those who attend Mass once or twice a year or a few times a month, the number stands at 84%, while 77% of Catholics who seldom or never attend Mass say they have a favorable view.
More than three-quarters of U.S. Catholics say they are excited that Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955, is the first U.S.-born pope.
Though so many view him in a positive light, only 7% of Catholic survey respondents say they know a lot about the new pope, while a quarter say they know nothing at all. Just under 70% say they know “a little” about the pontiff, who spent decades working for the Church in Peru, eventually serving as the bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023.
He was elected to the papacy by the College of Cardinals on May 8 after the death of Pope Francis on April 21.
Among weekly Catholic Mass attendees, 75% say they only know a little about the new pope, and 11% say they know nothing.
“These numbers show both the excitement and the challenge of a new papacy,” said Montse Alvarado, president and COO of EWTN News (CNA’s parent company). “While Pope Leo XIV has been warmly received, many still don’t know his story.”
“With our presence in Peru and the Vatican, and decades of experience covering the Church, EWTN News is uniquely positioned to help Catholics understand the people and places that shaped the Holy Father — and to serve as a force for unity for his pontificate,” she said.
The latest findings are part of Pew’s American Trends Panel, part of Pew’s ongoing research on Catholicism in the U.S.
In June, Pew reported that nearly 50% of adults in the U.S. have some connection to the Catholic faith.
“Catholicism’s roots in the United States run deep,” Pew stated in the report titled “U.S. Catholicism: Connections to the Religion, Beliefs, and Practices.”
Pew found that 47% of U.S. adults have Catholic ties: 20% identify as Catholic, 9% as “culturally Catholic,” 9% as ex-Catholic, and 9% report a connection through a Catholic parent, spouse, or past Mass attendance.
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I have now taken an “unfavorable view” about the Pontiff Leo, in light of a number of recent acts he is responsible for, including his “Jubilee” invitation to permit the LGBTQ-Pathology-Parade inside St. Peter’s Basilica, where they displayed themselves in their typical demonic costume-wear, and their “F*ck the Rules” tee shirts, as all can see, here:
https://x.com/LepantoInst/status/1964356537163370601/photo/2
Recalling to mind this message, from 2000 years ago: “Woe to you, false shepherds.”
Video (27 min. 07 sec.): Bishop Schneider Brutally Shreds James Martin’s Big Jubilee At The Vatican, by Anthony Stine, posted September 11, 2025.
The excellent site Catholic Answers posted numerous examples of the early Christian thinkers on the subject of homosexual relations, in answer to the modern Catholic Church claim that “loving” homosexual relations (but not just “lustful” relations) are OK and can be blessed by priests. Here are a few, which today’s popes and many cardinals and bishops and priests act against and probably would label as “hate speech”:
Saint Eusebius of Caesarea
“[H]aving forbidden all unlawful marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men, he [God] adds: ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for in all these things the nations were defiled, which I will drive out before you. And the land was polluted, and I have recompensed [their] iniquity upon it, and the land is grieved with them that dwell upon it’ [Lev. 18:24–25]” (Proof of the Gospel 4:10 [A.D. 319]).
Saint Basil the Great
“He who is guilty of unseemliness with males will be under discipline for the same time as adulterers” (Letters 217:62 [A.D. 367]).
Saint John Chrysostom
“[Certain men in church] come in gazing about at the beauty of women; others curious about the blooming youth of boys. After this, do you not marvel that [lightning] bolts are not launched [from heaven], and all these things are not plucked up from their foundations? For worthy both of thunderbolts and hell are the things that are done; but God, who is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forbears awhile his wrath, calling you to repentance and amendment” (Homilies on Matthew 3:3 [A.D. 391]).
“All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26–27] . . . were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases” (Homilies on Romans 4 [A.D. 391]).
“[The men] have done an insult to nature itself. And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men” (ibid.).
Saint Augustine of Hippo
“[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they should use one another in this way” (Confessions 3:8:15 [A.D. 400]).
Tertullian
“[A]ll other frenzies of the lusts which exceed the laws of nature, and are impious toward both [human] bodies and the sexes, we banish, not only from the threshold but also from all shelter of the Church, for they are not sins so much as monstrosities” (Modesty 4 [A.D. 220]).
Saint Clement of Alexandria
“All honor to that king of the Scythians, whoever Anacharsis was, who shot with an arrow one of his subjects who imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the gods . . . condemning him as having become effeminate among the Greeks, and a teacher of the disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians” (Exhortation to the Greeks 2 [A.D. 190]).
Saint Justin Martyr (the first recognized philosopher of the Christian era)
“[W]e have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do anyone harm and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution. And for this pollution a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of these, and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your realm. . . . And there are some who prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries to the mother of the gods” (First Apology 27 [A.D. 151]).
________________________________________
The Didache
“You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one that has been born” (Didache 2:2 [A.D. 70]).
The events of “a pride parade” in the St Peter’s Basilica is not as mind-blowing in itself as its juxtaposition with the TLM Mass in Latin celebrated there by Cardinal Burke in the same Basilica. To aid myself in processing that juxtaposition, I even made a photo collage of those two events: on the left – the photo of the “rainbow people” with “F*ck the Rules” in St Peter’s, on the right – a traditional Bishop, surrounded the altar servers in traditional garbs, facing the high altar and razing the Holy Host in the same St Peter’s. Pity I cannot post it here; it would express my point far better than words. The collage caused a mind to go into a halt.
Indeed, it is impossible to put two events together, in a believer’s mind. Yet they are being put together and then pushed into the throat of the Church. Not just “a pride parade”, not just the TLM with Cardinal Burke but them put together like two sides of a coin, with “F*ck the Rules” on one side and “Agnus Dei” on another one. It is disgusting even to type it but I invite the reader to stop and ponder the image.
“Oh, but the parade was first and the TLM will be second” does not really work because the Church of Christ exists in eternity – as long as Christ is its Head. “Agnus Dei” was present in St Peter’s in a form of the Blessed Sacrament when “F*ck the Rules” was brought in before Him. If we believe in the Real Presence, then it was literally said to Christ, in the same technique of a postmodern collage.
Hence, it is right to say that two events happen simultaneously, in the timeless realm. However, they are also mutually cancelling, leaving zero, nothing in the Church. Only that “nothing” can accommodate such contrary phenomena and not just accommodate – not to feel any discomfort.
“razing the Holy Host” in English means destroying or demolish. You may have intended ‘raising’ the Holy Host. A double entendre with relevance in both instances. No one can destroy the Eucharist because the act has harmful repercussion for the person rather than the Eucharist.
The bishop who offered the Mass and raised the Eucharist before adamant homosexuals, putatively a blasphemy may have incurred irreparable harm to himself. I would add inclusive of those responsible for permitting the act.
A spelling accident but, as you said, it is fitting.
Objectively speaking yes, no one can destroy the Eucharist – and yet he can, psychologically, for its recipients. It is done via a covert denial of what (or better to say Who) Eucharist is, via engaging in actions which “cancel” its reality.
For example, a priest implicitly denies the Real Presence, if yesterday he abused a child after Mass and today he preaches “the love of Christ which we all must show to others”/ “allow the little ones to come to me etc” and then gives communion to that very child he abused and to his family. Not only is it psychologically perverse, it is also blasphemous in the context of a juxtaposition, of what he has done and of the Church.
However, while such an experience often ruins a faith of an abused (and of his family), it is still not as potent as the actions of other clerics who cover up the abuse and allow the abuser to continue saying Mass, as if nothing ever happened. The fact that one who believes in Christ cannot engage in mutually excluding actions, of an abuse of a child and of preaching the love of Christ and “little children”, is for some reason being ignored. This is rightly experienced by the victims and their families as mind-blowing, a world turned upside-down. NB: not an abuse as such is mind-blowing but a sick dichotomy: the same person abuses and IS “Persona Christi”, psychosocially kills and gives Life (Eucharist), literally tearing the soul apart.
I gave an example of child sexual abuse to make my point more accessible but instead of abuse of human persons, a liturgical abuse can be just as effective if it involves a blasphemous attitude to the Person of Christ as to a non-person. A priest/Church who today preach about “love of Christ” and tomorrow spits on the same Christ via their actions represent the same sick dichotomy and the same vector, of a covert denial of Christ. In essence, this dichotomy reveals that both Christ (and a child from an example above) is just a soulless tool. He is not the Person. He can be switched on”, used to back up some agenda and then switched off again. I argue that this “on and off” switching of Christ, in His Church, psychologically destroys Him = the Eucharist for people.
Yes, duplicity is a scourge within Church and world.
For those of us who are aware of the wounds inflicted on Christ [figuratively] and Church [in reality], and positioned to meaningfully respond I cite the Prayer after communion for today’s Mass, Our Lady of Sorrows:
Having received the Sacrament of eternal redemption, we humbly ask, O Lord, that, honoring how the Blessed Virgin Mary suffered with her Son, we may complete in ourselves for the Church’s sake what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
This prayerful intent is most relevant regarding the moral tragedy of a Roman pontiff tacitly permitting the adamantly sexually disordered to pass through the Holy Doors and celebrate their depravity in Our Lord’s sanctuary.
Chris,
I’m unhappy to say that IMHO I also find it hard to support or now even listen to Pope Leo.
in addition to your point about the LBTG sacrilegious parade in St. Pete’s Basilica, he appoints as Vatican Director of Fine Arts Cristiana Perrella, whose resume includes porn productions (perhaps soft porn, I don’t know, but it sounds like porn none the same).
Then there’s the meeting with Fr. James Martin, seemingly a man of genuine compassion for gays but also one who expresses views undeniably contrary to Sacred Scripture and the true Magisterium. That used to be called heresy.
Lastly, there’s the Pope’s recent pronouncement which showed continued kowtowing to the atheistic Chinese regime.
Just all very disappointing. I’m not a Newman scholar by any means but I recall once reading his view that during the Arian heresy, it was the laity that sustained Christ’s Church. That may be the challenge now for us all.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Yes…thank you for noting the newly appointed pornographer-fine-arts-director.
Recalling to mind the title of an address given by Solzhenitsyn in 1976: “If One Doesn’t Wish to be Blind.”
One can find plentiful homoerotic artworks in the Vatican. It is far from being a major problem.
I looked into the artists from Perella’s resume; the majority do typical “modern art” – installations, photos, homoerotic/queer etc. that has nothing to do with the Christian sacred art. Two artists attracted my attention; I did not keep the links/names but they can be easily found.
One had an exhibition called ‘Sacrilegio’ (a self-descriptive title); an artist took medieval/early Renaissance prototypes, mostly ‘Madonna and Child’, and painted over their Faces some objects a la Salvator Dali suggestive of excrements, intestines, or tiny faces protruding and suspended looking like female sexual organ etc.
That was offensive of course but another one was far worse. The artist took photos of people, mostly females, burnt their eyes and mouths out and called them ‘Self-portrait with Nadia M.’ or ‘Self-portrait with Lisa D.’ etc. The artworks show only mutilated faces, not an artist himself. I understood that “self-portraits” are clearly his action towards those females whose faces he disfigured. I.e., the message is of a wild violence towards females bordering on psychopathy.
Being an iconographer, I have never seen a better anti-icon than his works which show a murderous denial of the personhood of the depicted. An iconographer typically labours over making the personhood as visible as possible; he enlarges eyes and makes them and a mouth very expressive to highlight the presence of a person. That anti-iconographer did exactly the opposite i.e. burned them out.
To me it is quite symbolic of what is going on and far worse than homoerotic stuff or even, strangely enough, ‘Sacrilegio’. Compared to that psychopathic “art”, various homo-nudes of another artist are nothing.
Such is the person who is now in charge of Christian art in the Vatican.
Actually, 100% of Catholics favor the Pope. The 20% in the poll misrepresented their Catholicity.
Unfortunately, per the same sort of popular opinion polls, 70% of Catholics reject Jesus’ teaching that the Eucharist is His Body.
Please understand that I am not suggesting that the polls define “Catholics” as baptized Catholics who also happen to obey Jesus.
Regardless of “methodology” in these polls, I believe there is much commonality in the numbers of those who “favor” Prevost and those who do not believe in the True Presence in the Holy Eucharist. I believe that among those who “favor” Prevost (84%) are many of the same who do not believe in the True Presence of our Lord in Holy Communion (70%).
Why do you come to that conclusion RM?
M. Bruno: You seem to be an authority on Catholicism Please tell the rest of us what exactly defines someone being called “Catholic.” Be specific, including identifiably measurable behaviors and beliefs. Thank you. This will be most helpful as it’s very obvious that just about anyone can call themselves Catholic (including the Pope).
I’m not too thrilled with his having granted a private audience to Fr. Martin, or with his kowtowing to the Chinese, but he seems to be easing up on the Latin Mass issue, and that I REALLY like, and overall I like him.
Of course the fact that he is DA POPE, as proclaimed by my latest t-shirt, is part of the whole thing.
I like the guy.
I like him, too Mr. Terence.
Are the 80% favorably disposed because just as it was during Francis’ pontificate they need not be worried by those troublesome rules and simply just get along with everyone? Attend Mass and you’re saved?
The same Pew surveying found that 70% of Catholics do not believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Pew also found that 23% of Catholics confess at least once a year. These aren’t remarkably good stats. To date Leo XIV hasn’t changed these stats except regarding likeability. He has exercised continuity with his predecessor Francis.
Said Henry VIII to Thomas More (in Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons”) who asked, “Then why does Your Grace need my poor support?”
“Because you are honest. What’s more to the purpose, you’re known to be honest…There are those like Norfolk who follow me because I wear the crown, and there are those like Master Cromwell who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I am their lion, AND there is a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves [!]–and then there is you.”
Thomas More had that rare integrity that remained faithful to authority, for Henry because he was king. When sent to the Tower he wrote Meg commending Henry’s graciousness for allowing him to live there in peace hoping he would continue in that vein.
There is a certain nobility in acknowledging deference owed to authority in our case a Roman pontiff, an office instituted by Christ. Which makes the Chair, and its occupant possessive of that owed dignity. With that there’s the life or spiritual death dimension that those of us with orders have a duty to assess, conscientiously respond without malice or insult in respect of the office.
Pope Leo XIV seems to be to be a likable fellow. I wouldn’t mind spending some time with him over dinner. However, that is not what makes a great pope. Is he orthodox, is he wise, does he take the the great charge of spreading the Gospel to all people seriously? Will he govern and to govern means that some shepherds need to be chastised for their own good and the good of the sheep. So far, the jury is still out IMHO. I’m looking forward to the re-instatement of Frank Pavone and Bishop Strickland. Once I see that, I’ll be relieved.
The date during which this survey was taken is very telling. I believe it was BEFORE he was patting the heads of those “Catholics” like Martin, and made appointments from those who support dubious and condemned sexual activities. I would wager if the poll was taken now it would show much more unfavorable reactions. I can tell you that those who I see at daily Mass are unhappy and disappointed.
I am sorry to feel this way. I was beyond thrilled that an American was actually elected pope. He seemed like a kindly and thoughtful person. However if he also is a “go along to get along” type looking for approval from the secular leaning types, he doesnt get my vote.
I believe also that Pope Leo is kindly & thoughtful.
As long as Fiducia Supplicans with all its ambiguities and sophistry remain a declaration from one of the Vatican’s dicasteries, suspicion remains that 2357 – 2359 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church will be targeted for alteration to suit the zeitgeist.