A report issued last November by C.B.O.S., a government-funded polling agency, found that only 23 percent of Poles under 25 regularly go to church, a third the level of three decades ago. The Catholic Information Agency reported that only 20 percent of young people now disapprove of sex before marriage. The primate of the Polish church, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, deplored what he called a “devastating” decline in religious practice among younger Poles.
Compared with most other European countries, Poland is still a bastion of faith, with nearly 94 percent of the population identifying as Catholic, according to the Central Statistical Office.
But for many young people, Poland’s Catholic Synod acknowledged in a recent report bemoaning “empty seats in the pews of parish churches,” the “church is just sad.”