Pope Franciss popularity in the U.S. on the rise, Pew finds
Pope Francis’s appeal in the US keeps rising, approaching the popularity of John Paul II according to a Pew survey. Seven in ten Americans are drawn in by the pope’s low-key personality, while it’s his openness and advocacy for the peripheries that might be winning him the favor of “religious nones.”
Pope Francis blesses hundreds of people gathered a few yards away on the U.S. side., as he stands near the U.S.-Mexico border fence along the Rio Grande, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016. (Credit: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia.)
Claire Giangravè
January 19, 2017
Americans can’t get enough of Pope Francis. A new Pew Research Center survey shows that the Argentinian pontiff keeps rolling in approval ratings, with 70 percent of Americans saying that they have a “very” or “mostly” favorable view of the pope.
In the past, Pope Francis has expressed a high degree of hesitation when it came to the United States, and his words on Donald Trump’s ideas concerning walls let slip, albeit accidentally, a cautious and perhaps mistrusting view of his presidency.
Yet a papal visit to the United States in September 2015, the pope’s insistence on wearing untailored clothes and driving an unassuming car, and out-of-the-blue phone calls may be among the reasons that Pope Francis is wildly popular in the U.S.
When Francis became pope in March of 2013, 57 percent of Americans had a favorable view of him, 14 percent had an unfavorable view and 29 percent could not give him a rating, according to the Pew survey.
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/01/19/pope-franciss-popularity-u-s-rise-pew-finds/