Catholic Church Growth Tops 40%

Making Catholicism Cool Again? The Church Has Grown 40% Since 2000

Above: Pope Leo XIV in May just new estimates show the Catholic Church recently topped 1.4 billion, a 40 percent gain since he Church first topped 1 billion in the year 2000. Image by Edgar Beltrán, The Pillar via Wikimedia Commons.

Church is cool again? The “smartest man in the world” is the latest high-profile convert.

“There is a great desire and longing for brotherhood,” Father Mike Schmitz said in a recent interview. “This desire for community, this desire for more.”

While the original Catholics spread the Good News along the ancient Roman network of highways, new Catholics share videos and Catholic content to spread the seeds of faith around the globe.

Gen Z men are leading a “resurgence” in Catholicism. Harvard University found a six percentage point jump in Gen Z identifying as Catholic between 2022 and 2023.

A new Gallup poll shows 34 percent of Americans now see religion’s “influence on society growing,” a 14 percentage-point jump from May 2024.

“As the world’s highest IQ record holder, I believe that Jesus Christ is God, the way, and the truth and the life,” YoungHoon Kim of South Korea posted on X Tuesday (the post quickly had more than 14 million views).

Kim’s native South Korea has seen Catholicism grow by 1,200 percent over the past 50 years (now accounting for 11.3 percent of South Koreans).