The relationship between nationality and religiosity on the example of the Archdiocese of Vilnius

The purpose of the study presented in this paper was to compare objectively measurable indices of religiosity (dominicantes and communicantes) for the national groups living in the same area. The area of the Archdiocese of Vilnius inhabited by the Polish and Lithuanian communities was analysed. The study attempted to determine the number of inhabitants of a given nationality within the boundaries of individual parishes, and then, owing to field measurements, to calculate the indices for both these national groups. Factors that could have an effect on the misinterpretation of the results were also discussed.
The results obtained in the case of the dominicantes index were two times higher, and for the communicantes index three times higher for the Polish community. This seems to confirm the hypothesis of the relationship between national identity and the degree of piety, which is verified by the turnout at the mandatory Sunday liturgy. However, the number of operational units under the study was too small to be able to draw more general conclusions about the entire communities living in the study area. In the Archdiocese of Vilnius, there are 30 parishes with at least one Holy Mass on Sundays in both languages. Five parishes of various ethnic compositions were selected for the survey: the parishes of Landvars and Trakai with the dominant Lithuanian population, the parish of Rudziszki, where there is a similar number of representatives of the two nationalities, and the parishes of Podbrzezie and Kowalczuki dominated by the Polish population.