Around 28% of Poland’s Catholics attended Mass in 2021, according to the latest official statistics.
The new figures were said to indicate a ”dramatic fall” in church attendance in one of Europe’s most Catholic countries.
On Jan. 13, the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics (ISKK) released its 2021 “Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae in Polonia,” a yearly numerical overview of Poland’s Catholic Church.
Since 1980, the institute has reported the percentage of “dominicantes” (Sunday Mass-goers) and “communicantes” (recipients of Holy Communion) out of the total number of baptized Catholics who are able to fulfill the obligation to attend weekly Mass on a given Sunday each year.
Its latest report said that 28.3% were present at Sunday Mass when a headcount was taken on Sept. 26, 2021, while 12.9% received Communion.
This marked a notable drop compared to the last time the numbers were published in 2019 — no Sunday Mass figures were issued for the pandemic year of 2020.
In 2019, the figure for dominicantes was 36.9% and communicantes 16.7%, so the proportion of dominicantes fell by 8.6% and communicantes by 3.8% between 2019 and 2021.
The annual report breaks the statistics down by diocese. The diocese with the highest percentage of dominicantes and communicantes in 2021 is Tarnów, in southeastern Poland, with 59.1% and 21.9% respectively, while Szczecin-Kamieñ archdiocese, in northwestern Poland, recorded just 16.9% and 8.1% respectively. Tarnów is known as Poland’s ”most religious” diocese, while Szczecin-Kamieñ is considered its least religious — testifying to wide regional disparities in religious practice.
The “Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae in Polonia” also contains figures for other sacraments. The latest report says that in 2021 there were 315,357 baptisms (compared to 312,082 in 2020), 331,744 first Holy Communions (297,951 in 2020), 265,681 confirmations (252,253 in 2020), and 103,807 Catholic weddings (91,468 in 2020).
Finally, the annual report offers a statistical profile of the Polish Church. In 2021, it says, the country had 10,352 Catholic parishes, 23,984 priests incardinated in dioceses, and 1,341 diocesan seminarians. Some 82% of students attended Church-run religion classes in the 2021-22 school year.