Pope Leo XIV is now the spiritual leader of most Long Islanders, data shows

Daily Point

Catholics make up half of the Island’s population in a shifting mosaic

The spectacle surrounding the election and installation of a new pope to lead the Catholic Church — culminating with the celebration that greeted the appearance of the new pontiff, Leo XIV, the first-ever American prelate, at the Vatican on Thursday — has intrigued even the nonreligious. But it is an especially significant event for the nearly 1.47 million Long Islanders who identify as Catholic.

Representing almost half of the populations of Nassau and Suffolk counties, the Catholic Church has the single largest religious body affiliation on the Island, according to a 2020 religious database gathered from 372 religious bodies around the country by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), and managed by the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Still, this is a 5.8% decline from an estimated 1.56 million Catholics in 2010.

The largest subgroup of Christian adults in the United States are Protestants (40%) according to a Pew Research study; only about 19% are Catholics. However, Long Island, like much of the Northeast, has predominantly been Catholic. Around 224,534 people were counted as Protestant on Long Island.

Shifting trends in religion affiliation on Long Island is a reflection of changing demographics in the region. There has been an uptick in the number of residents who identified as being Black Protestant, from 21,487 in 2010 to 28,736 in 2020. While the number of Catholic-identifying residents may have dipped, the share of residents who identify as Christian has remained roughly the same. This might signify a growing presence of regional Christian-faith subgroups such as the Korean Presbyterian Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Malankara (Indian) Orthodox Syrian Church.

Long Island has seen a jump in its Hispanic or Latino residents, who predominantly identify as Catholic, from 15.6% of the total population in 2010 to 20% in 2020. According to 2023 data from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a nonprofit that researches public opinion on culture and religion, Hispanic Catholics make up 10.4% of Suffolk’s population and 9% of Nassau’s.

Nassau has the third-highest share of Jewish residents by county in New York State with 11.6% of its population identifying as such. Brooklyn has the largest share with 12.1% identifying as Jewish, followed by Rockland County with 11.7%. Around 94,100 individuals on Long Island identified as Jewish, according to the ASARB database, with a majority, 76,887, residing in Nassau County. This represents a 6% decline from the 100,068 Jewish residents a decade ago.

Other non-Christian religious groups such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism have also stayed prominent, reflecting a growing Asian and African population on the Island. An estimated 76,878 people on Long Island identified as Muslim in 2020, more than double the number in 2010.

Counting individuals based on their religious affiliation can be challenging. A U.S. law prohibits the U.S. Census Bureau from obtaining this data, which leaves the task to groups such as ASARB, PRRI and Pew Research.

According to PRRI, 27% of U.S. residents were religiously unaffiliated as of 2023, 6 percentage points higher than a decade earlier. Around 11.6% of Nassau’s residents and 14.4% of Suffolk’s did not identify with any religious body.

— Karthika Namboothiri karthika.namboothiri@newsday.com

Pencil Point

The state of our air traffic mess

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Reference Point

War and a piece of our mind

The opinion pages in Newsday’s early days were dominated by World War II commentary. Given the enormity of the conflict, that’s understandable. Just as understandable is the ink devoted to the eventual defeat of Adolf Hitler. German generals signed surrender papers on May 7, 1945, and Newsday’s editorial board contemplated that victory in several ways.

In a May 8, 1945, piece called "Department of Utter Confusion," the board recounted the uncertainty and bedlam generated by the previous day’s 8:09 a.m. flash from Europe that the Germans had surrendered. Confirmation, denials and qualifications from various news services fueled speculation neither confirmed nor denied by Allied governments, including the U.S.

"The Administration throughout this war has done a fine job in overall military strategy," the board wrote. "It has done one of the lousiest jobs possible in the handling of the news."

Of course, the war in Europe was indeed over and May 8 became known as V-E Day. One facet of the board’s reaction was parochial: Long Islanders, the board wrote in a piece called "We Do It Better," celebrated more appropriately than residents of New York City.

"Yesterday was a day each of us observed in our own way. Many Long Islanders went to church; some went right on working because the weapons they produce are needed to defeat [Japan]; a few went out and got drunk as a skunk," the board wrote. "Not so New York. Even before it became apparent that V-E Day was really at hand, the city went wild. People knelt in prayer in the streets, so much paper was thrown out the windows that the police had to wet down some of the streets lest a match touch off a tragedy."

The board saw the responses as an "interesting commentary on mass psychology" and opined that "the difference in reaction is to the credit of Nassau and Suffolk. They allowed no hysteria to grip them; their thanksgiving was fervent but it also was adult."

More profoundly, Newsday’s board lamented the lives lost in the victory over "the Nazi barbarians." In "Some Won’t Return," the board suggested that "before we toast the victory let’s toast the dead who helped make the victory possible. These men gave their lives so that we might be free."

Perhaps the most poignant element of the board’s commemoration was the cartoon that accompanied the commentary. Titled "Starting a Nest," it depicted a dove perched atop a cannon, ready to lay the branch in its beak on the nest it was building in the cannon’s mouth.

For all the board’s hopes and lamentations, world peace did not last long. Five years later, the U.S. was at war in Korea.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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