The COVID-19 pandemic may be over, but its impact has had lasting effects on parish life in the Netherlands, according to a survey by the Dutch Catholic weekly Katholiek Nieuwsblad conducted three years after the initial lockdown in the Western European country.
The decline in church attendance from pre-pandemic levels, already predicted by many, can now be confirmed. Between 2019 and 2022, there was a drop of as much as 36 percent in weekend church attendance in the Netherlands.
“If you calculate this through, you end up with an average decline of about 14 percent per year, whereas in the years before the pandemic the decline averaged about six percent,” said Joris Kregting of research institute Kaski to Katholiek Nieuwsblad.
But there is another, less anticipated effect: The number of church volunteers also sharply declined. In the first year of COVID, that number dropped 10 percent, while in previous years the decline was three to four percent annually. “
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