The number of people attending Mass on weekdays is on the rise in many parishes across the Parramatta Diocese in Sydney. Source: Catholic Outlook.
This trend is in marked contrast to the reported long-term decline in Sunday Mass attendance at Catholic churches across the country.
The midweek Masses are becoming popular with busy workers, students and families who are looking for the chance to more regularly connect with their faith, and find solace, especially at a time of heightened anxiety due to overseas conflicts and increasing societal polarisation.
But the growing popularity of these midweek services is sometimes also a result of local factors, such as new housing developments that have seen more people moving into an area.
At some of these Masses, worshippers are coming from other parishes – and sometimes other dioceses – where midweek services are not offered.
Most parishes contacted by Catholic Outlook say attendance at their midweek Masses has returned to or surpassed the numbers that attended before COVID closed churches in 2020.
This is in contrast to the gradual decline in attendance at Sunday Mass around the country, which has been captured in the National Count of Attendance, a five-yearly report by the National Centre of Pastoral Research, first published in 2001.
The latest report from 2021, released in May 2024, showed that attendance at Sunday Mass across Australia had almost halved in 20 years – from 763,700 attenders in 2001 to 417,349 in 2021.
At St Thomas Aquinas Parish in Springwood, a town in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Parish Administrator Fr Chris del Rosario is regularly seeing up to 40 people at his midweek services, which parishioners say is a fourfold increase from several years ago.
“I think a big thing is availability of the sacraments,” Fr Chris said.
It’s a similar story at St Patrick’s Cathedral, in Parramatta, where the Dean, Fr Robert Riedling, is seeing an increasing number of workers turning up to their 6.30am services before they leave for the day, or the 12.30pm Mass for those on their lunch break.
“I think you’ll find people who come to the daily Mass obviously practice their faith quite seriously and for them it’s an important part of their day,” he said.
FULL STORY
Attendance at midweek Mass is on the rise in the Diocese of Parramatta (By Antony Lawes, Catholic Outlook)
