Church collections last year were the highest in a decade with over €2.9 million collected in parishes during mass, figures obtained by the Archbishop’s Curia show.
One of the reasons may be the increase in Catholic non-Maltese residents, the Church’s administrative secretary, Michael Pace Ross explained.
The Curia’s annual financial report for 2023 indicated a 20% increase in church collections.
Further data obtained by the Curia showed that church collections had amounted to €2.5 million in 2014, rising to €2.6 million in 2017, 2018 and 2019, then dropping to €1.5 million and €1.9 million, respectively, in 2020 and 2021 when the coronavirus pandemic kept people away from churches. Collections increased to €2.4 million in 2022 and €2.9 million in 2023.
“We are seeing a number of Christian communities who are practising their faith in Malta… We are also seeing that these Catholic non-Maltese residents are contributing in their own way towards this [increase in church collections],” Pace Ross said.
The spike in collections contrasts with the projected decline in mass attendance among locals.
According to the most recent Sunday mass attendance census, conducted in 2017, attendance is projected to sink to only 10% of Malta’s Catholic population by 2040.
Taken every 10 years, five such censuses have been carried out so far by Discern, the Institute for Research on the Sign of the Times.
The first was taken in 1967 and showed 81.9% attendance that dropped to 37% in 2017. Projections into the future give a 20% attendance in 2030 and 10% around 2040.
However, the 2020 national census, compiled by the National Statistics Office, showed a sharp rise in foreigners living in Malta.
Data showed that Malta’s foreign population increased by over 95,000 people in the past 10 years. There are now over 115,000 non-Maltese nationals in Malta, just over 22% of the total population.
A third of foreigners in Malta are EU citizens. A further 7% are from other European countries that are not EU member states.
Italians are the most prevalent foreign nationality at 12%, followed by British residents at just over nine per cent. Other common nationalities include Indian and Filipino, both at just under seven per cent.