The Archdiocese of Seattle, Washington announces that the CatholicsComeHome.org “TV Evangelization Effort Bore Fruit” following their Lent 2010 Catholics Come Home® initiative. Read the article excerpt below from The Catholic Northwest Progress, the official Newspaper for the Archdiocese of Seattle:
| AROUND THE ARCHDIOCESE | THE CATHOLIC NORTHWEST PROGRESS |
| OCTOBER 14, 2010 |
TV evangelization effort bore fruit
Annual parish Mass counts in month of October will provide more accurate estimate of returning Catholics following Catholics Come Home campaign
WESTERN WASHINGTON
Parishes in the Archdiocese of Seattle sponsored a campaign inviting Catholics who have been away from the church for a time to come home during Lent 2010.
The television advertising campaign created by Catholics Come Home was effective, but a precise estimate of how many Catholics returned to the fold will not be known until numbers from October Mass counts are tallied.
At the conclusion of the media campaign, the archdiocesan Office of Planning and Research coordinated Mass counts in April that reported an estimated increase in Mass attendance of 4.5 percent, just over 6,000 people, from counts taken in October 2009. In all, 131 parishes in the archdiocese participated in the April survey using the same procedures followed for the annual October Mass counts.
The counts taken during the five October weekends of 2010 will yield a more accurate assessment of increases in Mass attendance, providing a year-over-year comparison for the same month, according to the report from the archdiocesan research office.
The local ad campaign was made possible by literally thousands of small and large donations from local Catholics who wanted their friends, relatives and co-workers to come home to the Catholic Church.
Please continue to pray for all dioceses who are partnering to air CatholicsComeHome.org TV commercials beginning this December, and for all those away from the faith who will receive this invitation to return home to Christ’s Catholic Church!