The Catholic Church in Austria saw an increase in Mass attendance, a decline in formal disaffiliation and a rise in those ‘returning’.

The Church measures Mass attendance by conducting a headcount on two Sundays in the year.

This two-part count found there were 309,000 worshippers on the first Sunday and 366,000 on the second Sunday in 2022, 321,821 and 347,891 in 2023, and 366,210 and 378,797 in 2024, indicating a steady rise in attendance.

While the 2024 figures suggest Mass attendance is recovering after a sharp drop caused by the COVID-19 crisis, the numbers remain below pre-pandemic figures, when around half a million people attended Mass.

The new figures also confirmed an ongoing decline in the number of formal Church “exits,” where individuals formally disaffiliate from the Catholic Church.

Austria’s Catholic community is seeing an increase in the number of people being readmitted after formally disaffiliating or being received into the Church as converts, which are treated as a single category by statisticians.