These data are essentially meaningless if read out of context. I live in Italy, and I can confidently say that the irreligious population is far greater than 26% (especially amongst younger generations). That figure may account only for those who explicitly identify as irreligious, but so-called apatheists, agnostics, and others make up a much larger share of the population. Baptism and other outwardly religious practices are still commonly observed, more for a question of common mores, but in many cases the faith itself is no longer transmitted, many people don’t even reject the faith anymore; they simple don’t receive it.
Let me quote from this article, with my translation La messa sbiadita: ormai in chiesa ci vanno in pochi. E tra i giovani solo uno su dieci - Il Fatto Quotidiano
“Il dato più eclatante è la totale lontananzadalla messa delle giovani generazioni. Il terzo millennio dell’era cristiana registra che in Italia soltanto il 10 per cento dei giovani tra i 18 e i 24 anni si recano a messa ogni settimana. Non è molto meglio il comportamento della classe tra i 25 e i 35 anni: va a messa ogni domenica solo un po’ più del 10 per cento. Si sapeva già che dopo la cresima gli adolescenti cominciano a perdere il contatto con l’ambiente ecclesiale. Ma gli ultimi segnali mostrano che ora la fuga inizia già all’indomani della prima comunione.”
“The most striking figure is the complete absence of young generations from Mass. In the third millennium of the Christian era, statistics show that in Italy only 10 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 attend Mass every week. The behavior of those aged 25 to 35 is not much better: only slightly more than 10 percent go to Mass every Sunday.
It was already known that after Confirmation, adolescents begin to lose contact with the church environment. However, the latest signs indicate that the departure now begins as early as immediately after First Communion.”
“Uno dei quesiti sottoposto al campione interpellato è stato appunto il rapporto con la religione: «Nel 2023 il 31,5 per cento degli italiani non è mai andato in un luogo di culto nei dodici mesi precedenti e il 18 per cento ci è andato almeno una volta a settimana, mentre nel 2001 era il 16 per cento a non esserci mai andato nel corso dell’anno il 36 per cento almeno una volta a settimana». Se quindi vent’anni fa chi andava regolarmente in un luogo di culto era più del doppio di chi non ci andava mai, ora è quasi l’opposto.
Il grafico mostra che il numero degli italiani che si distaccano dalla Chiesa è in costante crescita. L’anno chiave è stato il 2017, quando il numero di chi non frequenta mai un luogo di culto ha superato la percentuale di chi segue almeno la messa domenicale.
«È interessante notare - commenta Ruffino, che collabora a siti specializzati come Youterend o Pagella politica - che se da un lato il disinteresse per la religione è più marcato tra i giovani, dall’altro la diminuzione di quanti vanno in Chiesa coinvolge tutte le fasce di età. Siamo di fronte dunque a un fenomeno generalizzato della società».
My translation
“In 2023, 31.5 percent of Italians had not attended a place of worship at any time during the previous twelve months, while 18 percent had attended at least once a week. In 2001, by contrast, only 16 percent had not attended at all over the course of the year, and 36 percent had gone at least once a week.”
Thus, whereas twenty years ago those who regularly attended a place of worship were more than twice as many as those who never went, today the situation is almost the reverse.
The chart shows that the number of Italians distancing themselves from the Church has been steadily increasing. The pivotal year was 2017, when the percentage of those who never attend a place of worship surpassed that of those who attend at least Sunday Mass.
“It is interesting to note,” comments Ruffino, who collaborates with specialized websites such as YouTrend and Pagella Politica, “that while disinterest in religion is more pronounced among young people, the decline in church attendance affects all age groups. We are therefore witnessing a broad, society-wide phenomenon.”
And it’s Italy, the very cradle of Christianity, we are talking about. Germany, France, the Uk, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway etc etc are even more secularized.
Btw
Reading this I realize that I have to thank God that i wrote “you can bet your skull” and not what is usually written in those cases. 
But can you confidently say the same isn’t true for Vermont?
No i cannot. Let me rephrase that this way if you want to nitpick: Italy, one of the least secularized States in Western Europe, is basically as secularized as the most secularized States in the U.S. Does that sound better to you or do you feel the need to nitpick again? 
It’s no better, because it’s still wrong.
Yeah whatever helps you sleep at night, Roy.
I hope that the situation may change in Italy as it is changing in some other European countries. What has surprised the researchers, is that the young generation is now more conservative than their parents. Also, they are more interested in the God of Christianity. In Helsinki, the capital of Finland, the RCC has experienced lately a positive problem: they receive so many new, young converts that their spaces have become too small.
The same phenomenon is seen in many other fairly conservative Christian churches but less so in the liberal ones.
An interesting note is that the usual division of generations to X, Y, Z, alpha is not working well. Generation Z (born between 1997-2012) behaves as two separate generations, Z1 and Z2. The dividing line seems to be around the year 2005. Z2 (and alpha) are the more conservative ones.
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I have to agree. Several times I’ve become frustrated with following Christ and have been ready to chuck it, but I always come up against the evidence and the fact that it is strong enough to “convict” Jesus of having risen from the dead (at which point I’m like Peter: “Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life”) and am “stuck”.
Ditto that. What strikes me most about the Gospel isn’t any legal aspect but the fact that there has been a war waging down the millennia over control of the human race, and Jesus came and fought on our side. It was a human who first surrendered us to hostile forces – Satan, if you will – and had to be a human to defeat those forces, so God the Son became a human and did what none of us could do.
When I read “immanuel” in the Hebrew I no longer see just a statement that God came, but that He is on our side – “with us” not just as in location, but as intent (cf. Paul, “God is for us”).
True, but they also have more latitude, essentially sticking to the handful of actual ecumenical councils.
My mom had a friend who turned into one of those; she got daily emails trying to turn mom into a Catholic.
I was a very religious Catholic and even attended high school seminary. I found I could not resist sin and got emotionally tired of fearing damnation to hell. My belief was based on social (family) relationships and the preaching of the priests and the religion. So I thought that this cannot be the truth, but indeed was left bankrupt with no idea of what was the truth. But I did know that truth exists, it just needed to be discovered. I became first an atheist believing in a materialistic or scientific explanation and read and self studied but found that this too led to a dead end. Natural philosophy in Newton’s time meant a scientific study of God’s creation, but instead he and Darwin led many scientists to believe there was no God, and all was determined by cause and effect, and the belief there was a natural cause for the big bang that created the universe.
However what has become clear to me is that if there is a creator God then trying to find the theory of everything that does not involve God is a dead end. Modern scientific discoveries on the dilation of time, and the requirement for nonlocal consciousness in quantum physics for creation of matter was finally the slam dunk for me on Christianity.
If God could create the universe using quantum physics then He can certainly have His Son born of a virgin and resurrected from the dead.
Catholics can be saved but the idea that we somehow must overcome sin by ourselves is a problem. Most Protestant faith doctrine is that we are saved by faith and this faith through grace and power of the Holy Spirit changes us and transforms us into holiness free from sin.
Hope this helps you.This process of discovery took me 40 years. Maybe less for you?
Catholics can be saved? You felt the need to clarify that? Just as an FYI, Protestants can be saved as well.
And which Catholic seminary taught you “we somehow must overcome sin by ourselves”?
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WElcome to this site. I do not have your background specifically. But I found it helpful to ask questions and do my own research–which means reading (sometimes books that are a century or two old), asking questions of people with backgrounds that I do not (or did not originally) have…thinking about what I have heard and read…listening to debates, lectures --these all helped. God is in all of it, and you find surprising “truths” in surprising places. Hope others will be more helpful in specific ways.