Facebook is favorite online mass venue this Lent

Because the heat is intolerable especially in packed churches,  over 60 percent of devotees attend online masses on Facebook, where practically all church masses are streamed live.

But for some people (like me) I have been attending daily online masses because I can hardly cope with the schedules and considering the traffic that I must suffer going to churches farther than my place (which have limited daily mass services), I’d rather avail of mass services in the comfort of my home and in a secluded space– where no noise or people can ever bother me. In church, you see too much movement which makes it hard to focus on the activity going on and on what the priest is saying.

This Lenten season, practically all big churches have masses, retreats and recollections and Holy Hour being streamed on Facebook. So one does not have to worry about being late for any desired activity in observing the Holy Week. Even the Stations of the Cross are being streamed. So why bother about squeezing through the crowded churches with this insufferable weather and the physically-draining traffic jams of the Metro. 

Most popular (in terms of online attendees and comments) is the Quiapo church– which offers almost hourly masses; then the Manila Cathedral, the Redemptorist Church in Baclaran and then Christ the King, Mary Queen of Hope (SM malls in Makati and QC) and the basilica in Caloocan City.

A study of Capstone-Intel Corp. observed that 64.7 percent of social media users in the country flock to Facebook pages of the Catholic churches for the dedicated online masses for the Lenten season.

The survey done last February 14– Ash Wednesday which officially started the Lenten season to March 22– studied social media users’ behavior using all publicly available posts from social and non social media platforms to gather the sentiments of the public about the religious observance.

The study found that Lent had a 976,318.7 engagement score for its 4,556 total post count, yielding over 4.996 million total reaction count, said a report of Business Mirror. 

The breakdown is as follows: “Facebook love” accounted for 64.7 percent of total reactions with 3.234 million; followed by “Facebook like” with 1.758 million reactions (35.2 percent) “Facebook sad” with 1,631; “Facebook angry” with 962; “Facebook haha” with 851 and “Facebook wow” with 767 reactions.

Capstone-Intel said most of the “Facebook love” reactions were in support of the accessibility of livestreams on the platform with users interacting to livestreams from Quiapo Church dedicated to the observance of Lent.

The study also said Lent garnered 100 percent positive reaction or that religious observance were all angled positively. Worth noting, it said, is that religious observance received 292.425 million social media reach, while non-social media reach was only 410,906.

Capstone-Intel said in terms of top posts, 47.8 percent of mentions for Lent came from Facebook, followed by Tiktok with 22 percent and X (formerly Twitter) with 17.8 percent. RDLC