England 'is a Catholic country'

London: Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country's most dominant religious group.

More people are now attending Mass every Sunday than are worshipping with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.

It means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.

Leading figures warned on Saturday that it faces becoming a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call to the Church of England.

The figures show attendance at the Church of England's Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000.

A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, show that the average number of people going to Mass each Sunday last year stood at 861,000 compared to 852,000 Anglicans worshipping.

The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had been dwindling.

It is part of the changing face of church-going across Britain in the 21st century that has also seen a boom in the growth of Pentecostal churches, which have surpassed the Methodist Church as the country's third largest Christian denomination.

Worshipping habits have changed dramatically with a significant rise in attendance at mid-week services and at special occasions - this year, the Church of England is expecting three million people to go to a parish church over Christmas Eve and Day.

Radical approach

In an attempt to combat the declining interest in traditional religion, the Anglican Church has launched radical new forms of evangelism that include nightclub chaplains, a floating church on a barge and even internet congregations.

The Rev Alister McGrath, professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, said that the church attendance findings from the organisation Christian Research should act as a wake-up call to the Church of England.

"While it can rightly point to the weight of history, the importance of cultural memory, the largest number of church buildings and nominal church members in defence of its continued status as the established church, there is clearly a problem emerging," said Professor McGrath, one of Anglicanism's most respected figures.

Numbers

"What happens if the established church becomes a minority church?"

The Catholic Church has also suffered a serious fall in the size of its congregations, but the expansion of the European Union in 2004 has seen its numbers bolstered by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Poles and Lithuanians.

Mass attendance in 1991 was recorded as 1.3 million, representing a drop of 40 per cent since 1963. But over the last six years it has fallen by only 13 per cent, with the rate of decline slowed by the immigrants from Catholic countries.

The Rt Rev Crispian Hollis, Bishop of Portsmouth, said the Roman Church has been increasingly active in trying to attract lapsed worshippers back to church, but conceded that mass immigration had been a significant factor in swelling its numbers.

"The number of Cath-olics attending church has been catching the Anglicans over a number of years," he said.

"We don't want to be seen to be scoring points over the Anglican Church as we are in no way jealous of its position as the national church, but of course these figures are encouraging. It shows that the Church is no longer seen as on the fringes of society, but in fact is now at the heart of British life."

Churchgoing in Anglican and Catholic parishes had stood at around one million each for the last 10 years, though the relative equality in their numbers over recent years has been surprising considering that there are 25 million people who regard themselves as Anglicans in Britain, with only 4.2 million Catholics.

BLAIR MOVE
Religious decision

Former prime minister Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism means he is now a member of the most popular Christian denomination in Britain, according to religious research published yesterday.

Blair, now a Middle East peace envoy, is not the first high-profile Briton to convert to Catholicism. The author Evelyn Waugh, the son of an Anglican churchman, converted in the 1930s, and novelist Graham Greene was a noted convert, although his books often explored doubts over faith.

- Reuters