By and large, yes.

Days before the pope hits the States, a new survey takes the temperature of his American flock:

According to the survey, eight out of 10 people are very satisfied or at least somewhat satisfied with how Pope Benedict leads the Roman Catholic Church.

However, the study also found out that, although the interest in faith is high among the young, many Catholics don’t go to confession and most of them consider that they don’t need to attend the Mass to be good Catholics. Less then a third of US’s 64 million Catholics go to Mass.

The once Irish, Italian and Polish predominant U.S. Roman Catholic Church also turned to increasingly Hispanic, the survey showed.

The Catholic Church in the US, which will welcome the Pontiff during his visit from April 15 to 20, is also loosing members to other faiths such as evangelical Protestant churches.

The papal visit begins on Tuesday and will include a Mass at Washington’s new ballpark. More than a-half million people are currently seeking tickets for the public events included in papal tour.

According to a nationwide survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 23.9 percent of the adult U.S. population identifies itself as Catholic. Although the U.S. Catholic Church lost some of its members to other faiths, it also gained several through immigration from Latin America and through conversion.

About 39 percent of U.S. Catholics are Hispanic according to the estimations made by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.