By Ruadhan Jones
OSV News
DUBLIN — Baptisms in the Catholic Church in Ireland have fallen by almost a third since 2015, with just one Irish diocese seeing any positive change, a new report shows.
While around 60% of the 30% collapse can be attributed to declining births, the rest is accounted for by “rising secularism,” according to the Catholic nonprofit Iona Institute.
The effect of secularization is “very significant,” continues the Iona Institute’s report, “Baptism trends in Ireland,” released Aug. 18.
The decline is in line with census figures, which show that the number of people who identify as having “no religion” — the so-called “nones” — has been “rising fast” in Ireland over the past 10 years, the report states. Irish census figures show that the number of people identifying as Catholic fell from over 79% in 2016 to 69% in 2022.
Hostility toward the Church is also prevalent in Ireland. A 2025 study by Irish pollster Amarach found that two-fifths (40%) of the Irish population view the Church negatively, with another third indifferent.
This hostility is largely attributed to the fallout from revelations over the past three decades of abuses in Church-led institutions.
However, the report sees a glimmer of hope in the continued rates of baptism among “cultural” Catholics, suggesting that it is a sign that negative attitudes toward the Church are not as entrenched as has been feared.
Commenting on the figures, Tom Finegan, chairman of the Iona Institute, said that “in a way the figures are not a surprise given the rapidly falling number of births and growing secularization. Given that births have fallen by almost a fifth in the last 10 years, and more people are ticking the ‘No Religion’ box in the census, we could expect nothing but a big drop in baptism figures.”
However, the Catholic think tank finds some cause for hope in the census figures. Examining the data suggests that the “vast majority” of parents who identify as Catholic still have their children baptized.
“No one who is very anti-Catholic would have their child baptized,” it concludes.
Finegan warned that it “remains to be seen” whether the phenomenon will continue to be a “force in Irish life.”