Number of Catholics in Barcelona drops sharply
People attend a mass at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona on 26 July 2020. Photo AFP, Pau Barrena
Southern Europe
The proportion of Roman Catholics in the Spanish city of Barcelona has fallen by over 35 per cent in the last 20 years.
The Dutch Christian newspaper Reformatotisch Dagblad writes so based on the Spanish Christian news site ProtestanteDigital. The recent information comes from the city council.
In four districts of the metropolis, capital of the autonomous region of Catalonia, Protestant churches now outnumber Roman Catholic churches.
Last year, barely 40 per cent of the city's inhabitants indicated that they were Roman Catholics (practising or non-practising), as opposed to over 75 per cent in 1998, according to the Directorate-General for Religious Affairs.
The decline of Roman Catholicism is not only due to the growth of the number of non-Catholic churchgoers. The increase in the percentage of non-believers also plays a role. It grew from barely 20 per cent in 2001 to 49 per cent in 2021.
In the long term, too, the growth seems to be off among Roman Catholics, as the vast majority of residents who consider themselves Roman Catholics belong to the age group over seventy.
