El Paso Catholic Diocese survey shows roughly 1 in 10 attend Mass

The El Paso Catholic Diocese has revealed the results of its Mass attendance survey.

The diocese conducted a headcount on the weekend of October 15th and 16th in all its parishes. It found just over 77,096 people attending Mass. To put that in perspective, the El Paso metro area in Texas (including Hudspeth County), has a population just over 800,000. The diocese encompasses 10 counties in the state of Texas. To give a rough estimate, the numbers show less than 1 in 10 could be found at Sunday Mass that particular weekend. On the diocese’s website, it says it served 686,037 Catholics in its region in the year 2012. Using that number to consider the actual number of Catholics in the region, slightly more than 1 in 10 could be found at Sunday Mass.

The diocese also broke down the numbers by language. Spanish Masses had the highest attendance with 40,386 attendees. That’s a little more than half of the attendees overall. English Masses followed second with 27,018 attendees. Bilingual Masses and Masses in other languages had an attendance of 9,692.