Only 37% Of Malta’s Population Actually Goes To Mass, And That Number’s Only Going Down
Sunday Mass attendance is projected to decline to just 10% of Malta’s Catholic population by 2040.
Last weekend, The Times of Malta published the Malta Sunday Mass Attendance Census 2017, taken every 10 years. Five of these censuses have been carried out so far by Discern, the Institute for Research on the Sign of the Times.
The results showed that just under 37% of the country’s Catholic population go to mass… and that number is set to continue falling ever further in the coming years
In fact, projected numbers in the next 20 years are set to drop all the way down to 10%.
It’s getting harder to attract young people to go to Mass, and those who do attend usually are in the 50+ age bracket
The Times of Malta report showsedthat “the number of Catholic youngsters up to 14 who go to Sunday Mass has halved from 42% in 2005 to a mere 22% in 2017, while there has also been a drop from 40% to 19% among those aged 15 to 24.”
So it looks like most people are religious without actually being religious
Despite all this, Catholicism is still very dominant
In a 2010 Eurobarometer survey, Malta was reported as one of the most religious countries in Europe, and the Discern data supports this.
In 2017, 95% of participants claimed to believe in a God and 92% identify as Catholic. And yet, just 37% of Malta’s Catholic population go to Mass.
This is in fact what Fr. Joe Borg expressed in an opinion piece posted to the Times of Malta yesterday. He recognised that there are young people finishing their catechism, taking the individual decision to reaffirm their faith, who just don’t attend Mass at all.