Watching Mass Online Remains Elevated Even With Mass Attendance Back to 2019 Levels

Five years ago, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and lockdowns began, many U.S. Catholics turned online to continue some semblance of worship on Sundays. Google search volumes for “Catholic Mass” increased 458% from what they were in February 2020. Prior to the pandemic, the search volumes for Catholic Mass on YouTube were comparatively low all the way back to January 2008, when measurements became possible.

Search volumes vary from 0 to 100. From January 2008 to February 2020, the average monthly search volume for Catholic Mass on YouTube was 6. This rose to an average of 78 from March 2020 through April 2022. After this time through today, the search volume for Catholic Mass has been 39. This tends to rise some during months including Ash Wednesday, Easter, and Christmas.

It appears the pandemic has created a new habit. Although in-person Mass attendance has returned to pre-pandemic levels, there is still a higher demand for watching Catholic Mass online than before the pandemic. This is not as high as it was during the peak interest period from March 2020 to April 2022, but is still elevated enough to represent a significant new behavior adopted by Catholics that did not exist as broadly in the past.

Mass Attendance Is Up

The Diocese of Arlington recently released a series of it’s October Mass attendance headcounts and these show the decline of attendance during the pandemic and then the slow but steady increase back to pre-pandemic levels.

This news came just as we at CARA had estimated the year-end Mass attendance nationally in the United States. We have utilized a method using our national surveys and Google Trends search volumes for Mass attendance related terms to estimate weekly attendance. As shown below (click image to enlarge), prior to the pandemic in 2019, weekly Mass attendance averaged 24.4%. From the beginning of the pandemic lock-downs in March 2020 to the declared end of the pandemic in May 2023, Mass attendance averaged 15.0%. Since this time, through the first week of 2025, it has averaged 24.0%.

 

 

Christmas in 2024 was the first time Mass attendance for this holiday reached its 2019 level. Easter and Ash Wednesday Mass attendance had returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2023. We have hypothesized that the heightened awareness and warnings about COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases during January were keeping some from returning to Mass at that time of year. We will keep tracking Mass attendance through 2025 and let you know how Ash Wednesday and Easter measure up.