A SURVEY BY Irish bishops has suggested that Ireland is the most religious country in western Europe.

The analysis of contemporary faith practice found that it’s one of the “very few outliers with a relatively high level of overall religiosity” across the island.

At 32%, Ireland has one of the lowest proportions of adults reporting they had no religion in west Europe – putting it on par with Austria. A total of 59% reported being Catholic as of last year.

Among a younger cohort this rises to 42%, but the report found that there had been an uptick in religious affiliation and religious practice.

This effect is most strongly evident among those aged 16-29 years, across both Catholics and Protestants. For young Catholic adults, 17% attended Mass weekly last year, while it’s 14% for all young adults.

Taken across a longer timeframe for Catholic young people, this is up on the 14% who attended Mass weekly prior to the pandemic, but remains down on figures showing that one-in-four young Catholics attended weekly back in 2015.

Overall, only Portugal and Italy reported lower levels of religious practice compared to Ireland.

Elsewhere in Europe, there was a higher level of practicing of religion – fewer than 10 per cent of people in Cyprus and Greece said they had no religion.

Netherlands had the highest proportion of people with no religion at more than 70%, followed by Sweden and Latvia.