New Haven, Conn. - About 60 percent of Americans say they intend to go to church for Easter Sunday, with 70 percent of Catholic Americans and 92 percent of practicing Catholics saying they will attend services.
“The survey shows that Easter remains an important part of the lives of most Americans,” said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus, which commissioned the survey.
Anderson said March 27 that the celebration of Easter is “of great importance” to American Catholics, as is the spiritual preparation of Lent that helps Catholics to “lead a better life.”
The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion survey also asked about Americans' Lenten practices.
About 80 percent of practicing Catholic respondents said they intended to observe Lent through the traditional Catholic practice of going without something or doing something differently. About 62 percent of all Catholics said the same. Only 33 percent of all American adults said they took special action during Lent.
The numbers of Americans and Catholics who said they planned to attend Easter services declined slightly from a 2009 survey from the Marist Institute.
The Marist Poll survey of 2,000 Americans was conducted March 2-5. Its respondents included 515 Catholics. It claims a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points for Americans respondents and plus or minus 4.3 percentage points for Catholics respondents.
The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal charitable organization with over 1.8 million members worldwide.