How many Catholic Masses celebrated every day on planet Earth

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How many Catholic Masses are celebrated every day on planet Earth? What verification do you have of your answer?
 
atassina said:
How many Catholic Masses are celebrated every day on planet Earth? What verification do you have of your answer?
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If I were good at math and I knew the amount of Catholic churches and chapels where Mass was being celebrated, I could tell you but there are so many variables like the International Date Line for instance, and the fact that some Catholic communities don’t have Mass everyday, and some places may not have Mass at all because of a priest being unavailable on a regular basis. But as I said before if I knew ahead of time where Mass was being celebrated and in how many places I would be able to tell you but I don’t have that information. I think it is alegitimately good question
 
If you go by the number of priests, according to CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate), in 2014 there was a total of 414,313 Catholic priests worldwide. (This figure includes the Eastern Churches as well as the Latin Church. This figure is limited to those priests in full communion with the Holy See, and includes the Eastern Catholic Churches. It is not clear to me whether the figure includes bishops; if not, add another 5,000.

Then there are the Liturgies celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and various bodies of Eastern or Western origin that possess valid Apostolic Succession. The Eastern Orthodox communion is the largest of these, and according to a Wiki page citing a 2010 study by Alexei Krindatch, they had over 50,000 priests in 2010.

Then you’d have to account for priests who say more than one Mass per day, priests who do not offer Mass daily, and so on. But supposing that on average, each priest offers one Mass daily, I’m going to hazard a guess that the number of Masses offered daily worldwide would be in the neighborhood of half a million.
 
Stephen_says said:
How many windows are there in New York City?
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How many archangels can dance on your head??? :)🙂

Seriously, the OP’s question requires too much information. The world has 24 time zones. But some, like the Central European zone, hold hundreds of millions of Catholics, and others far fewer.

There would also be far more Masses said on Sunday than on other days.

And on Good Friday, no Masses are said at all.

ICXC NIKA
 
Ad Orientum,
Thanks for your ballpark guess. You made reasonable assumptions and gave a reasoned, approximate answer, about 500,000. Good enough.

a
 
atassina said:
Ad Orientum,
Thanks for your ballpark guess. You made reasonable assumptions and gave a reasoned, approximate answer, about 500,000. Good enough.

a
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Sure, it was interesting to look up some figures. In light of GEddie’s remark, though, I’ll just add that on Sundays it might be more like a few million.
 
Ad_Orientem said:
If you go by the number of priests, according to CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate), in 2014 there was a total of 414,313 Catholic priests worldwide. (This figure includes the Eastern Churches as well as the Latin Church. This figure is limited to those priests in full communion with the Holy See, and includes the Eastern Catholic Churches. It is not clear to me whether the figure includes bishops; if not, add another 5,000.

Then there are the Liturgies celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and various bodies of Eastern or Western origin that possess valid Apostolic Succession. The Eastern Orthodox communion is the largest of these, and according to a Wiki page citing a 2010 study by Alexei Krindatch, they had over 50,000 priests in 2010.

Then you’d have to account for priests who say more than one Mass per day, priests who do not offer Mass daily, and so on. But supposing that on average, each priest offers one Mass daily, I’m going to hazard a guess that the number of Masses offered daily worldwide would be in the neighborhood of half a million.
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The same website says there are ~222,000 parishes. A few thousand might not have Mass on any given day.

Add to this however, all the Abbey Churches, chapels at religious houses, oratories, university chapels, etc. and 222,000 is surely near the absolute lowest possible number of Masses on any given weekday.

-Tim-
 
TimothyH said:
The same website says there are ~222,000 parishes. A few thousand might not have Mass on any given day.

Add to this however, all the Abbey Churches, chapels at religious houses, oratories, university chapels, etc. and 222,000 is surely near the absolute lowest possible number of Masses on any given weekday.

-Tim-
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The parishes that do not have Daily Mass are at least in part balanced out by those in larger cities which have several (the Vancouver Cathedral had 4 daily Masses and confession when I was there!) as well as hospital chapels and the like, so I’d call it a wash.

ICXC NIKA
 
atassina said:
Ad Orientum,
Thanks for your ballpark guess. You made reasonable assumptions and gave a reasoned, approximate answer, about 500,000. Good enough.

a
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I’d agree with that number, give or take a couple of hundred thousand. 🙂
 
From the rising to the setting of the sun, let the name of the Lord be praised!
a
 
atassina said:
Ad Orientum,
Thanks for your ballpark guess. You made reasonable assumptions and gave a reasoned, approximate answer, about 500,000. Good enough.

a
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Why the question? I think 500K is way off…much more!
 
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