National Catholic Survey Finds 39% Have Experienced Racial Discrimination

A national survey released October 26 offers churches a detailed picture of how adult Catholics in the United States perceive and experience racism. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate surveyed 2,401 self-identified Catholics between May 15 and June 30, 2026, using English- and Spanish-language online questionnaires and an opt-in panel supplied by Qualtrics. Researchers Mark M. Gray and Ali Mumbach statistically adjusted the responses to align the sample with recent General Social Survey estimates for the adult Catholic population. According to OSV News, 60% of respondents said racism exists in their local community, and 39% said they had experienced racial discrimination generally. Those reports were especially common among Black Catholics at 66%, Hispanic Catholics at 54%, and Asian Catholics at 54%. The survey also asked where discrimination had occurred: 10% reported experiencing it within a parish community and 11% within Catholic education. Although those church-related numbers were lower than experiences reported in society more broadly, they are still significant for congregations charged with recognizing the God-given dignity of every person. Respondents most often identified police, government, housing, and business as institutions where racism exists a great deal or a lot. The study therefore does not reduce racism to one setting; it shows that believers bring into parish life experiences shaped by neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, public institutions, and family histories. For ministry leaders, the report supplies nationwide evidence that racial reconciliation is not an abstract political slogan but a pastoral concern touching people who worship, learn, and serve in Catholic communities across the country.

The findings also point toward practical work in preaching, formation, listening, and discipleship. Seventy-four percent of respondents agreed that racism is sinful, the same share agreed that racism can take the form of a sin of omission when injustice is left unchallenged, and 67% supported addressing policies and institutional barriers. Yet awareness of Catholic pastoral letters and statements about racism was incomplete, with respondents roughly divided between those familiar and unfamiliar with major church documents. Only 28% said they had heard racism addressed in a parish homily during the previous year, although the figure rose to 43% among Black Catholics and 34% among Latino Catholics. Nearly half of all respondents, 49%, said they would like to hear more in their parishes about church teaching on racism. Gray told OSV News that greater adult faith formation appeared to correspond with better understanding of that teaching. That relationship gives congregations a constructive path forward: leaders can teach the biblical foundations of human dignity, lament, repentance, forgiveness, justice, and reconciliation while also creating space to hear how members have been affected. The report further found that 47% of adult Catholics, including 57% of Black Catholics, consider the canonization of Black, brown, and Indigenous faithful important. Churches can therefore connect contemporary formation with the witness of believers whose lives demonstrate holiness amid discrimination. A responsible response will avoid treating statistics as substitutes for people. Instead, the national data can prompt careful local questions: whose experience has not been heard, what teaching is missing, where have omissions caused harm, and which concrete practices would help a parish become a more truthful sign of unity in Christ?