Catholic baptisms in Ireland have fallen by nearly a third in 10 years
The Irish are increasingly choosing the "no religion" option in the census.
Over the past ten years, the number of Catholic baptisms in Ireland has fallen by nearly thirty percent. This is reported by EWTN News.
The Iona Research Institute has published the results of a survey on the decline of religious indicators in the country. The organization's staff recorded a 29.6 percent drop in baptisms between 2015 and 2025. The institute's leadership identified two main reasons for this trend — a falling birth rate and the rise of secularism.
The decline in the birth rate accounted for approximately sixty percent of the overall drop in figures. Institute chairman Tom Finegan noted that the country's birth rate had fallen by nearly one fifth over the past ten years. Officials also recorded a growing number of citizens marking "no religion" on census forms.
As the Union of Orthodox Journalists reported, Catholic seminaries worldwide have 14,000 fewer students.
