In my experience, it's extremely rare among Catholics, whether or not it was when you were growing up.

Source: I'm Catholic today.

I would ask both of you where you grew up Catholic, because I suspect that the prevalence of such beliefs is much more regional than strictly denominational.

Specifically, from what I've read, they're likely to be much more prevalent in the US Bible Belt and other places with strong concentrations of evangelical fundamentalists, because despite Catholicism being extremely different doctrinally, the actual Catholics in that area are almost invariably going to be more influenced by the culture around them, including the attitude toward religion and science.

I didn't grow up Catholic. I converted as an adult from a fundamentalist Evangelical background, and one of the criticisms well-intentioned friends had for me at the time was that "the Catholics believe in evolution."

And that's very much the case. Formal Church documents confirm the belief, and the very large majority of Catholics believe it. There isn't anything contradictory in believing evolution may have been the means by which God created people.

Whether that was the case when or where anyone else was growing up, I can't attest. I'm only speaking to the commonality of the belief in the present.

Here’s some 2019 and 2013 polling data

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/06/how-highly-...

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/12/30/publics-view...

Catholics seem almost the same as the US population overall to believe in evolution. Evangelicals tend to express the opinion that humans have existed in the same form forever.

I think the important thing to note though, is this was not always the case? Catholicism and evolutionary theory have a rather strange history where it has changed stance several times. The recent Catholic church has not been opposed to it and has priests who work on evolution just at there are priests who work on physics and the large hadron collider.

Its rare with european catholics. US , I dont know