Catholicism is very much part of the warp and weft of Italian life, as an inevitable social, cultural and political force that Italians take for granted. The deep and old cultural ties are made visible by the presence of more than 100,000 Catholic churches in the country. Catholicism still has a near religious monopoly in Italy. There is a small but ancient Jewish community in the heart of Rome and elsewhere, a growing Muslim immigrant population, and sizeable numbers of agnostics and atheists to challenge that religious monopoly, but the monopoly is still very real. Protestantism, and the spirit of the Protestant Reformation, never took root in Italy. Read more...
National Demographics
- 1 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision, Online Edition.
- 2 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2015 revision.
- 3 United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Homicide Statistics 2015.
- 4 Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2016.
- 5 World Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report, 2016.
- 6 UNICEF, State of the World's Children, 2016.
Catholic Demographics
These statistics are derived from the Vatican's official publication, Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2020 (Vatican City: Librera Editrice Vaticana, 2022). The numbers may differ from data reported by other sources on this site.
