Catholic parishes across North America celebrate Mass in far more than English. This guide explains how to find a Mass in a particular language on this site, where that information comes from, and how far the data currently reaches.
Using the language filter
The church directory has a Language dropdown alongside the search box, country and region filters, and an “Official stream” checkbox. Choosing a language narrows the list to churches with at least one service recorded in it. Tick the stream box as well and the list narrows again to churches whose checked official stream carries that language — not merely churches that happen to have both a stream and a Spanish Mass.
The filter writes its state into the address bar, so a filtered view is a link you can bookmark or send to someone: /churches/?language=es for Spanish, /churches/?language=pl for Polish, and so on, using the two- or three-letter language codes in the table below. Add &streams=1 to require a stream, or ®ion=NJ to restrict to a state or province. For scheduled online services in general, the online Mass page lists what is coming up next.
Where the language data comes from
Languages are not guessed from a parish name or a neighbourhood. Each one is taken from what the parish or its diocese publishes about that particular service — a diocesan Mass-times directory, a parish schedule page, a bulletin. A language is only attached to a stream when there is evidence that the stream itself carries that language, which is a higher bar than the parish offering it somewhere in the week. That is why the stream column below is much smaller than the church column.
The consequence is that absence means “not published in a source we have read”, not “not offered”. Many parishes celebrate a monthly Mass in a community language without listing it in the diocesan directory. If you know of one, please send it through the contact page with a link to the parish or diocesan page that says so.
Languages recorded in this directory
33 languages appear across the churches listed here. The counts below are generated from the catalogue when the site is built, so they change as coverage grows.
| Language | Code | Churches | With a stream |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | en | 2,845 | 256 |
| Spanish | es | 1,028 | 115 |
| French | fr | 181 | 8 |
| Italian | it | 67 | 8 |
| Polish | pl | 64 | 8 |
| Latin | la | 51 | 8 |
| Portuguese | pt | 47 | 4 |
| Vietnamese | vi | 46 | 5 |
| Korean | ko | 25 | 0 |
| Haitian Creole | ht | 22 | 1 |
| Cantonese | yue | 13 | 0 |
| Mandarin | cmn | 10 | 2 |
| Chinese | zh | 8 | 0 |
| Filipino | fil | 8 | 1 |
| Croatian | hr | 7 | 0 |
| Lithuanian | lt | 5 | 0 |
| Arabic | ar | 4 | 0 |
| Hungarian | hu | 4 | 0 |
| Slovenian | sl | 4 | 0 |
| Tamil | ta | 4 | 0 |
| Slovak | sk | 3 | 0 |
| Hmong | hmn | 2 | 0 |
| Swahili | sw | 2 | 0 |
| Ukrainian | uk | 2 | 1 |
| American Sign Language | ase | 1 | 0 |
| Aramaic | arc | 1 | 0 |
| Chuukese | chk | 1 | 0 |
| German | de | 1 | 0 |
| Igbo | ig | 1 | 0 |
| Indonesian | id | 1 | 0 |
| Konkani | kok | 1 | 0 |
| Lao | lo | 1 | 0 |
| Samoan | sm | 1 | 0 |
A few codes deserve a note. Chinese appears under more than one code because parishes publish it differently: cmn is Mandarin, yue is Cantonese, and zh is used where a source says only “Chinese”. Tagalog (tl) and Filipino (fil) are recorded as the source names them rather than merged. la is Latin, which covers both the Traditional Latin Mass and Latin celebrations of the ordinary form, and ase is American Sign Language.
The larger language communities
Spanish is by far the largest after English, with 1,028 churches recorded, and it is the language most likely to have a stream attached, because parishes that celebrate a Spanish Sunday Mass often stream it for parishioners who cannot travel. Italian, Polish, French, Vietnamese and Portuguese follow, and the smaller entries in the table — Korean, Croatian, Haitian Creole, Tagalog, Tamil, Hungarian, Ukrainian and others — are each concentrated in a handful of parishes rather than spread evenly. Where a language community is served, it is usually served by one or two specific churches in a metropolitan area, so it is worth filtering by language across a whole state rather than only near your own postcode.
Because coverage is uneven by geography as well as by language, browsing sometimes beats filtering. Try states and provinces, or dioceses if you know which one you are in — a diocesan hub is often the fastest way to see the whole language mix in one place. Whatever the listing says, the parish's own website and phone number are on every profile, and they are the right source before you travel.
Currently 1,428 church records carry at least one published service in a language other than English, across 32 languages.