Catholic Church in the Netherlands

Common card · No. 499923

The Catholic Church in the Netherlands (Dutch: Rooms-katholiek kerkgenootschap in Nederland) is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Its primate is the Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, since 2008 Willem Jacobus Eijk. In 2015 Catholicism was the single largest religion of the Netherlands, forming some 23% of the Dutch people, based on in-depth interviewing, down from 40% in the 1960s. Adherents of Catholics are however heavily concentrated in southern regions of the country, with a relatively small presence in large parts of the country. Although the number of Catholics in the Netherlands has decreased in recent decades, the Catholic Church remains today the largest religious group in the Netherlands. Once known as a Protestant country, Catholicism surpassed Protestantism after the First World War, and in 2012 the Netherlands was only 10% Dutch Protestant, down from 60% in the early 20th century, which is primarily due to rising lack...

Read on Wikipedia · Image W. Bulach, CC BY-SA 4.0