Despite regular polls showing that about 30 percent of Italian Catholics claim to attend Sunday Mass regularly, a closer look reveals a more uncertain future for the Italian Church. LifeSiteNews reports that in 2004-5, the Patriarchate of Venice undertook a study that showed the actual attendance numbers were no more than 23 percent, with only 15 percent attending every Sunday.
Those who attended one to three times were 7.7 percent.
The survey noted that Mass attendance increases with the level of education, in contrast to findings in other parts of Europe, the report states.
It is likely to slide further in the coming years.
A survey conducted by Professor Paolo Segatti of the University of Milan, published in the magazine Il Regno in May, found that the news is even worse among younger Italians. Among those born after 1981, Segatti found,
Mass attendance, self-identification as Catholic, and adherence to Catholic teaching are "in collapse," he said, and predicted a near future in which Catholicism holds only "minority status in Italy."
"It is imaginable that when the children of the younger generation become parents, they will make a further contribution to secularization."
Segatti writes: "The youngest Italians are the ones to whom religious experience is most foreign. They clearly go to church less, believe in God less, pray less, trust the Church less, identify themselves as Catholic less, and say that being Italian does not mean being Catholic."
SIC: CTHAUS