{"id":8,"date":"2008-03-26T15:08:36","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T15:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/poll-pope-unknown-to-most-amer.html"},"modified":"2008-03-26T15:08:36","modified_gmt":"2008-03-26T15:08:36","slug":"poll-pope-unknown-to-most-amer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/poll-pope-unknown-to-most-amer.html","title":{"rendered":"Poll: Pope Unknown to Most Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Daniel Burke<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\nWASHINGTON (RNS) Most Americans hold a favorable opinion of Pope Benedict XVI, but the vast majority confess they don&#8217;t know much about the pontiff, according to a new poll.<br \/>\nJust weeks before Benedict&#8217;s first trip to the U.S. as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, 58 percent of Americans say they have a favorable or &#8220;very favorable&#8221; opinion of him.<br \/>\nBut when asked how much they know about the 80-year-old German, 52 percent said &#8220;not very much,&#8221; and nearly 30 percent said &#8220;nothing at all.&#8221;<br \/>\nBenedict and Americans will have a chance to get to know one another better April 15-20, when the pope celebrates Masses, greets interfaith leaders, and visits heads of state in New York and Washington, D.C.<br \/>\nForty-two percent of Americans said they&#8217;d like to attend one of Benedict&#8217;s public appearances, according to the survey, which was conducted by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion and financed by the Knights of Columbus. Sixty-six percent of Catholics said the same.<br \/>\nMore than 70 percent of Americans look forward to hearing Benedict talk about spiritual matters such as God&#8217;s presence in daily life, spiritual fulfillment and how to positively affect the world.<br \/>\nThe survey polled 1,015 adults 18 years of age or older, 613 of whom were Catholic. The margin of error for all Americans is plus or minus 3 percent; for the Catholic sample alone it is plus or minus 4 percent.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Daniel Burke Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Most Americans hold a favorable opinion of Pope Benedict XVI, but the vast majority confess they don&#8217;t know much about the pontiff, according to a new poll. Just weeks before Benedict&#8217;s first trip to the U.S. as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, 58 percent of Americans&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Poll: Pope Unknown to Most Americans - Benedictions: The Pope in America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/poll-pope-unknown-to-most-amer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poll: Pope Unknown to Most Americans - Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Daniel Burke Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Most Americans hold a favorable opinion of Pope Benedict XVI, but the vast majority confess they don&#8217;t know much about the pontiff, according to a new poll. Just weeks before Benedict&#8217;s first trip to the U.S. as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, 58 percent of Americans&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/poll-pope-unknown-to-most-amer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-26T15:08:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"aroan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Poll: Pope Unknown to Most Americans - Benedictions: The Pope in America","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/03\/poll-pope-unknown-to-most-amer.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Poll: Pope Unknown to Most Americans - Benedictions: The Pope in America","og_description":"By Daniel Burke Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Most Americans hold a favorable opinion of Pope Benedict XVI, but the vast majority confess they don&#8217;t know much about the pontiff, according to a new poll. 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