82% of US Monasteries Had No Perpetual Vows in 2025

In 2025, 82% of religious institutes in the USA had no members making perpetual professions. This is according to the January 2026 study, Women and Men Professing Perpetual Vows in Religious Life: The Profession Class of 2025. It was released by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.

The study is based on responses from 520 out of 723 superiors — a response rate of 72% among US religious institutes.

Around 10% of institutes reported one perpetual profession, 8% reported between two and nine. Vocations are highly concentrated in a relatively small number of institutes.

In total, the responding institutes reported 179 men and women taking perpetual vows in 2025, of whom 105 were men and 74 were women. This reverses a historic pattern. For most of US Catholic history, women's religious life has been numerically dominant.

According to the report, 92% of respondents said they had been Catholic since birth. Around 69% were born in the United States.

The average age at perpetual profession was 38.

53% of respondents said that at least one person had discouraged them from pursuing religious life.

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