Less than a year after the death of John Paul II, Poland is having to cope with a drop in the number of churchgoers. At least that’s the finding of a statistical survey recently published by the daily “Metro”, which reveals that the attendance of Poles in church was 43% in 2004, a slight decline over the 47.5% registered in 2000. The same survey links this trend to a drop in the number of churchgoers that began immediately after the fall of the Communist regime: in the 1980s church attendance was 60%, which had fallen to 50% by 1991. “The claim that Polish churches are gradually being emptied of Catholics is as yet unproven”, said Witold Zdaniewicz, director of the statistics agency of the Polish Church in a comment to the press agency ENI. “It’s true he continued that the figures point to a progressive drop in the attendance of the faithful at mass, but at the same time the percentage of those who participate in the sacraments has increased. So this decline is compensated by growing rates of ‘religious commitment’.
