Lost sheep can get stuck in traffic, which is why the Catholic Church has ads on DART buses this month saying "Catholics Come Home for Christmas."

The ads are the most conspicuous part of a local campaign launched by Bishop Kevin Farrell to woo lapsed Catholics.

"When I travel around the diocese, I have so many people tell me that their wife or husband or parents or kids have abandoned their church and faith," said Farrell, who oversees the Diocese of Dallas. "They're always asking me what we can do about it."

Farrell came to Dallas from Washington, D.C., where a Catholics Come Home campaign had been used in local parishes.

He challenged lay leaders here, particularly the Dallas Diocesan Council of Catholic Women, to do something similar.

Members of that group have assembled information packets for each parish, encouraging priests to use worship service bulletins, homilies and outside banners to get the message across.

With financial backing from the Knights of Columbus and private donors, the council also arranged to put ads on the backs of 13 Dallas Area Rapid Transit buses, at $359 per ad, to run through Dec. 27.

"We have been very enthusiastic about this, as it will bring nonpracticing Catholics back to the church," said Ellen Stelmar, council president.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life published a study earlier this year on changes in religious affiliation in the United States. It found that the Catholic Church had a greater net loss than any group, with about one in 10 adults being a former Catholic.

The Catholic Church has grown rapidly in Texas, largely because of Hispanic immigration, and many Dallas-area Catholic churches are full for weekend Masses.

But Farrell said that for lots of reasons, including clergy sex abuse, many people here, as elsewhere, have left the church.

"People may be upset about all of the scandals of the past," Farrell said. "I want them to come back. ... One of the reasons people come back is not because I say so – I'm expected to say that – but because of the laity in our parishes."

Kelly Flessner of Murphy attends St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church in Plano, and she's a lay leader of its Catholics Come Home effort, teaching a class for people returning to the faith.

She does so from experience, having left as a young woman, unhappy that the church set guidelines for who could receive communion. Over time – including years in which she attended other churches – she overcame that objection.

Flessner said she concluded that Jesus' observance of the Last Supper with a few chosen disciples implies a "level of commitment" consistent with Catholic teaching about communion.

She attends Catholic services now with her children and her husband, Kyle, a recent convert.

"I couldn't let it go," Flessner said, noting that a welcome banner at a Wylie Catholic church nudged her into trying Catholicism again. "Every time I go into a Catholic church, I feel at home. I feel at peace."