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Top 11 Most Catholic U.S. States

Can you name the states where the highest percentage of people are Catholic?
Source: Pew Forum
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: November 10, 2019
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First submittedNovember 8, 2019
Times taken16,920
Average score63.6%
Rating4.20
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State
42
Rhode Island
34
Massachusetts
34
New Jersey
34
New Mexico
33
Connecticut
31
New York
%
State
28
California
28
Illinois
26
Louisiana
26
New Hampshire
26
North Dakota
+18
Level ∞
Nov 10, 2019
North Dakota surprised me.
+14
Level 82
Nov 10, 2019
From a quick look at demographics it seems there was lots of immigration from the Catholic parts of Germany.

More Wikipedia trivia: "North Dakota has the most churches per capita of any state. Additionally, North Dakota has the highest percentage of church-going population of any state."

+5
Level 88
Nov 11, 2019
And I'm guessing Carlifornia and New Mexico are up there because of immigration coming from Mexico and central America?
+4
Level 86
Nov 11, 2019
Yeah, I always thought of it as Lutheran country. I guess a lot of the German immigrants were fleeing the Kulturkampf.
+8
Level 88
Nov 11, 2019
I was surprised that Maryland and Pennsylvania weren't on the list. They were traditionally quite Catholic states. Florida too with it's large hispanic population.

I guessed Louisiana because of its French heritage. And mainly guessed places with a lot of people with Irish/Italian/Hispanic heritage.

I did not expect North Dakota though.

+4
Level 59
Nov 11, 2019
Odd there is no Maryland considering it was named after a Catholic Queen of England, Henrietta Maria.
+3
Level 82
Nov 12, 2019
Oh yeah... Louisiana is one of two I missed but really obvious in retrospect. I'm very surprised that Texas and Arizona don't feature given the huge numbers of Hispanics there. Thought Florida might, as well, for the same reason.
+1
Level 67
Feb 18, 2020
Random guessing works, or so it seems. I don't have much of an idea of how religions are spread throughout the U.S, but I guessed North Dakota. Given percentages it is by far the least likely to be guessed, it seems.
+3
Level 82
Feb 18, 2020
It has some to do with each state's colonial history and some to do with immigration. Places with large numbers of Irish, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Latino immigrants have a lot of Catholics in them. And Louisiana which was colonized originally by the French.
+1
Level 75
Feb 21, 2020
Louisiana was also owned by Spain from 1762 to 1801, which added to its Catholic history.
+2
Level 34
Jun 25, 2021
I got North Dakota because I had a roommate from there who was German and Catholic. It was a total revelation to me that there were German Catholic populations in the US, much less in North Dakota!
+3
Level 24
May 15, 2023
Big surprise I got MASSachusetts
+1
Level 53
May 23, 2023
Surprised Maryland isn't up there, growing up in Baltimore it seemed like everyone was Catholic
+1
Level 81
Jun 12, 2023
I tried Maryland, too. The first time I met a lot of African American Catholics was in the DC area, and they all had roots in Maryland. In great NYC and New England, most Catholics are white ethnics or Black Latin@s, although I also had a Catholic Pakistani student in Brooklyn. (There are over 1.3 million Catholics in Pakistan, but that's obviously a very tiny percentage of the population.)
+1
Level 76
Jul 5, 2023
Is it weird that I gravitated towards the states that tend to be the most liberal for one of the most non-liberal branches of Christianity (at least historically)?