(OSV News) – Mass attendance throughout England and Wales increased by almost 50,000 people between 2022 and 2023, which a leading Catholic professor believes could be the catalyst for new growth in the church.
Data from the England and Wales bishops' conference showed encouraging growth, with the number of Mass attendees rising to nearly 555,000 in 2023 from 503,008 in 2022.
Speaking to OSV News, Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St. Mary's University in London, who shared the data from the bishops' conference, believes the figures show signs of encouragement for the church.
He told OSV News: "I was very pleasantly surprised by the numbers. The people who are left at the end of 60 years of secularization have to be there for a reason – plus they're hanging out with other people who are also there for a reason."
Bullivant pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as a key moment for the church, since it "helped clear out some of the natural decline," he said. "The people who would have been leaving in the next five years left then," he added, referring to COVID-19 lockdowns when churches were shut.
He estimated that most Catholics who wished to return to Mass after the pandemic had probably returned by 2022. While the numbers are still below those from before the pandemic, Bullivant believes there are reasons to be hopeful, describing those who have returned to Mass since the closures as the 'harder core" Catholics.
"Because we sort of cleared out the people who would be going anyway (due to COVID-19), there's a sense in which the people who have come back are the 'harder core' of people," he said. "After 60 years of secularization, after the abuse crisis, you've every reason not to be there – you're there because it's important to you."
The figures show a steady decline of numbers attending Mass since figures were first collected in 1958: from a healthy 1.8 million then to 701,902 people attending Sunday Mass in 2019, according to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. In 2021, the number was 389,960, with a jump in 2023 to 554,913.
Catholics comprise around 10% of the population in the United Kingdom – but they can be a "creative minority," according to Bullivant. He believes secularization and church decline has "bottomed out" and that the Catholic Church, which has diverse congregations in the U.K. due to immigration, can have hope.
One such example is the influx of people from India, where there are significant numbers of Catholics. The report from the National Office of Statistics, "Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending June 2024," stated: "Indian was the most common nationality for non-EU+ immigration for both work-related (116,000) and study-related (127,000) reasons in YE (year ending) June 2024."
Bullivant said that "there will always be a hard core and there are always new people coming in every single year. That sense of growth, that dynamism helps."
He pinpointed families as a key area of mission, since he was told by priests that many families who attended Mass in parishes before the pandemic have not returned. He also has high hopes for young people in the church.
As a lecturer at a Catholic university, the professor has seen how university chaplaincies are currently places of great faith for young people. Flame, the largest Catholic youth event in the U.K., which will take place March 15 at London's Wembley Arena, which holds 8,000 people and recently announced it had sold out of tickets. He believes young people are making a statement about the importance of their faith by attending Mass and meeting like-minded people.
"At the younger end of the spectrum," Bullivant said, "if you're going to church, you're at the extreme end of young people – a very small minority.
"To take it seriously enough to take up an hour of your life each week, and then ideally you find yourself with another group of those people – then, you have to be there for a reason, because you believe it and because you think it's important," he added.
A new poll by OnePoll showed that 62% of Generation Z are "very" or "fairly" spiritual. Youth ages 18-24 are half as likely to describe themselves as atheist as 45-60 year olds, the poll said.
In Scotland, a similar pattern was seen, with figures showing 95,029 people attended Sunday Mass in 2023, compared to 89,420 in 2022. Like England and Wales, it is an increase, but lower than pre-pandemic numbers – 127,003 for 2019.
"With that creative minority, everyone does encourage each other and it is a place where vocations can be considered, Bullivant concluded.
