CNA Staff, Feb 12, 2025 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
Though not yet near pre-pandemic levels, Mass attendance numbers are on the rise in England and Wales, according to figures from the national bishops’ conference.
In 2023, an estimated nearly 555,000 people attended Sunday Mass in England and Wales, a roughly 50,000-person increase over 2022, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales told CNA via email.
The spokesman described the figure as “not a full return to pre-COVID levels, but it is an improvement on recent years.” He also noted that the figure may be a “slight underestimation as some parishes may not have given their figures when their diocese requested them.”
Stephen Bullivant, director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, London, told CNA he is “tentatively hopeful that this trend for modest (re)growth will continue in subsequent years.”
He pointed to a 2024 article he wrote for the Tablet in which he noted that while Mass attendance in the U.K. has significantly decreased over the past several decades — leading to projections of a near-extinction of Catholicism — such dire projections seem unlikely due to signs of growth in some areas of U.K. Catholic life.
That said, Mass attendance stood at roughly 829,000 across England, Wales and Scotland on a “typical Sunday” in 2019, Bullivant wrote, meaning attendance still has a long way to climb before it reaches pre-pandemic levels, if ever.
In addition, a late 2024 study showed that the sexual abuse crisis deeply affected Catholics in Britain, with a third of Mass-goers saying they have reduced their Mass attendance because of concerns about the child sexual abuse crisis.
In his article, however, Bullivant pointed to signs of renewed vigor and new growth in some areas in the Church in the U.K., such as anecdotal reports of increased attendance at Easter services and relatively large numbers of adult converts, thriving university chaplaincies, and vibrant diasporic and immigrant communities, suggesting that while secularization has deeply impacted the Church, it is unlikely to result in complete disappearance.
“To put it frankly, rumours of the Church’s death – albeit four decades hence – have been very greatly exaggerated. There’s a big difference between ‘not dying out’ and ‘bursting with new life,’ however,” Bullivant wrote. “British Catholicism might be the former, but that needn’t mean it’s anything close to the latter.”
The news from the U.K. comes following recent estimates suggesting that Mass attendance numbers in the United States have recovered fully following the pandemic’s disruptions — though U.S. weekly attendance still stands at only 24%.
The new analysis by the U.S.-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) used national surveys and Google Trends data to estimate attendance, which also revealed that attendance for important holy days like Easter and Christmas has recovered from the COVID crisis.
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The solution to follow Africa’s lead of 95% Sunday Mass attendance (in some regions) is Eucharistic Adoration. As many holy hours as possible!!!
Also, the Church has to make a huge public apology about how it left the flock in the hands of the wolf during unnecessary lockdowns (as proven by 18000 studies in a Johns Hopkins meta-analysis and many other epidemiological and theological reasons I’d be glad to provide). That shattered the confidence in the Priests, Bishops and Pope, inducing many to believe that instead of good pastors they had salaried ones.
That deep wound can only be healed by a public apology and the promise that it will never happen ever again by adding a clause in Canon Law and by a dogma declaring the un-contagiability of accessing the Sacraments and sacramentals, since God prioritizes the health and salvation of souls above bodies, thus granting a supernatural safe-conduct.
Lockdowns, not only were completely useless and harmful, but also an instrument for religious persecution. Freemasons plan new useless lockdowns after the 2024 WHO Pandemic Treaty, where nations are expected to give away their sovereignty to the WHO:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-the-international-plandemic
Lockdowns ware instrumental to vastly reduce the grace capital:
– by blocking the access to the graces of Mass, sacraments, sacramentals
– by blocking the access to plenary indulgences for the souls in Purgatory (who pray for us when released from that fire)
– by blocking the anointment of the sick, increasing the peril of hell for so many abandoned souls
– by inducing couples to cohabit without marriage (denied by Bishops/Priests, and denied by the Church which didn’t establish an exceptional rite without the need of a Priest to be present)
– by delaying the breaking of the chains of Satan on the newborns with Baptism (denied by Bishops/Priests and forgotten by the Church, which didn’t instruct for emergency baptisms which can be administered by the lay, even atheists)
– by closing Churches and Eucharistic Adoration in spite of the petition of Pope Francis
Evil increased exponentially by locking grace. Many souls were lost to eternal damnation, which is far worst than a strong flu which was serious only for the elderly and commorbidities, who could still die with other flues, because it was very rare that anybody would die from COVID. The majority died with COVID, being other the primary cause of death. Yet, the real primary cause of death wasn’t only a pre-existing condition but censorship and blocking of 30+ effective treatments.
Check my article on Catholic365 d0t c0m “Apologies from your Church”