COVID-19 Takes Toll on Catholic Faith: Survey

A Catholic church located in Gwangju is nearly empty on Feb. 23, 2020, as people avoided crowded places amid the spread of the new coronavirus. (Yonhap)

SEOUL, Oct. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — Catholic believers now have a weaker sense of practicing faith after COVID-19 took a heavy toll on various Catholic activities such as mass and other rituals that require physical contact, a survey showed Wednesday.

The Catholic Times, the Daegu-based religious newspaper, conducted a survey with the Woori Theology Institute on 5,482 Catholic believers and priests, 56.6 percent of whom agreed that practicing faith in everyday life is important.

Compared to last year’s result (90.7 percent), the response has gone down by 34.1 percentage points.

Those who spent longer hours watching religious content online and those who increasingly felt the importance of faith and church communities accounted for 63.5 percent and 61.9 percent of all respondents, respectively.

These results, too, were 11.6 percentage points and 24 percentage points lower than last year’s survey.

“This is a result where respondents’ focus on faith has significantly diminished,” the institute said.

When asked about participation at Sunday mass, 40.5 percent felt a stronger need to go to Sunday mass, while 27 percent thought otherwise.

The majority of priests, including monks and nuns, however, believed that there is less need to go to Sunday mass, surpassing those who thought otherwise by more than 30 percentage points.

H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)