Germany has seen a dramatic shift away from Protestantism – one that has greatly outpaced a decline in the share of Germans who are Catholic.
On a number of issues, Catholic partisans often express opinions more in line with their political parties' positions than with their church's teachings.
While Slovakia is majority Catholic, around seven-in-ten Czechs are religiously unaffiliated – the highest share of unaffiliated adults in 34 European countries surveyed.
The Catholic Church remains closely tied to Europe. Catholics are the largest religious group in many of the continent’s most populous countries.
American Catholics are racially and ethnically diverse and fairly evenly dispersed throughout the country. Many want to see the church make significant changes.
Just three-in-ten American Catholics now say the pontiff is doing a good or excellent job of addressing the sex abuse scandal.
Just three-in-ten Catholic adults say Francis is doing an excellent or good job addressing the sex abuse scandal, down 14 points from this January and 24 points since 2015.
Pope Francis begins a four-day trip this weekend to the Baltic states, the first papal visit to these countries in 25 years. While the Baltic countries have a substantial Christian population, only Lithuania and Latvia have large numbers of Catholics.
Pope Francis’ additions to the College of Cardinals since his election in 2013 have tilted the leadership structure of the Roman Catholic Church away from its historic European base and toward the “global south” – that is, developing nations mostly in the Southern Hemisphere.
Nine-in-ten Americans believe in a higher power, but only a slim majority believe in God as described in the Bible
