Catholic Church in England and Wales

Catholic Church in England and Wales
; Catholic Church in England and Wales
	Westminster Cathedral, largest Catholic church in England and Wales
Classification	Catholic
Orientation	Latin
Scripture	Bible
Theology	Catholic theology
Polity	Episcopal
Governance	CBCEW
Pope	Francis
President	Vincent Nichols
Apostolic Nuncio	Miguel Maury Buendía
Region	England and Wales
Language	English, Welsh, Latin
Headquarters	London, England
Founder	Augustine of Canterbury
Origin	c. 200s: Christianity in Roman Britain; c. 500s: Anglo-Saxon Christianity ; Britain, Roman Empire
Separations	Church of England (1534/1559)
Members	6.2 million (baptised, 2023)
Official website	cbcew.org.uk

The Catholic Church in England and Wales (Latin: Ecclesia Catholica in Anglia et Cambria; Welsh: Yr Eglwys Gatholig yng Nghymru a Lloegr^[1]) is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See. Its origins date from the 6th century, when Pope Gregory I through a Roman missionary and Benedictine monk, Augustine, later Augustine of Canterbury, intensified the evangelization of the Kingdom of Kent,^[2] linking it to the Holy See in 597 AD.

This unbroken communion with the Holy See lasted until King Henry VIII ended it in 1534.^[3]^[4] Communion with Rome was restored by Queen Mary I in 1555 following the Second Statute of Repeal and eventually finally broken by Elizabeth I's 1559 Religious Settlement, which made "no significant concessions to Catholic opinion represented by the church hierarchy and much of the nobility."^[5]

For 250 years, the government forced members of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church known as recusants to go underground and seek academic training in Catholic Europe, where exiled English clergy set up schools and seminaries for the sons of English recusant families.^[6]^[7]^[8] The government also placed legislative restrictions on Catholics, some continuing into the 20th century, while the ban on Catholic worship lasted until the Catholic Relief Act 1791. The ban did not, however, affect foreign embassies in London, although serving priests could be hounded.^[9] During this time, the English Catholic Church was divided between the upper classes, aristocracy and gentry, and the working class.^[10]^[11]^[12]^[13]

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales claims 6.2 million members.^[14] That makes it the second largest single church if Christianity is divided into separate denominations.^[15] In the 2001 United Kingdom census, Catholics in England and Wales were roughly 8% of the population. One hundred years earlier, in 1901, they represented only 4.8% of the population. In 1981, 8.7% of the population of England and Wales were Catholic.^[16] In 2009, post the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, when thousands of Central Europeans (mainly heavily Catholic Poles, Lithuanians, Slovakians and Slovenians) came to England, an Ipsos Morioka poll found that 9.6% were Catholics in England and Wales.^[17]^[18] In the 2021 census, the total Christian population dropped to 46% (about 27.6 million people).^[19]^[20]^[21]

In North West England one in five are Catholic,^[22] a result of the high number of English recusants in Lancashire ^[23]^[24] and large-scale Irish migration in the 19th century particularly centered in Liverpool.

^ "Sul y Genhadaeth Gartref" (PDF). cbcew.org.uk (in Welsh). 16 September 2012.
^ "St. Augustine of Canterbury", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 3 April 2019 from New Advent.
^ Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 625: "The early Reformation gained a curious sort of victory in England, where the murderously opinionated monarch Henry VIII found an alliance with Reformers useful during his eccentric marital adventures."
^ Dairmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation, Viking, 2004, p. 194.
^ MacCulloch, The Reformation, 279-280.
^ Pollen, John Hungerford (1911). "Robert Persons" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11.
^ Rothery, Mark; French, Henry, eds. (2012). Making Men: The Formation of Elite Male Identities in England, c.1660-1900 - A Sourcebook. Macmillan International Higher Education. p. xxxv. ISBN 978-1-1370-0281-5.
^ Schofield, Nicholas (2009). The English vicars apostolic, 1688-1850. Gerard Skinner. Oxford: Family Publications. ISBN 978-1-907380-01-3. OCLC 630165901.
^ 'Lincoln's Inn Fields: The Church of SS. Anselm and Cecilia', in Survey of London: Volume 3, St Giles-in-The-Fields, Pt I: Lincoln's Inn Fields, ed. W Edward Riley and Laurence Gomme (London, 1912), pp. 81-84. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol3/pt1/pp81-84 [accessed 31 July 2020].
^ Antonia Fraser, The King and the Catholics (New York: Doubleday, 2018), 25.
^ Brian Magee, The English Recusants, A Study of Post-Reformation Catholic Survival and the Operation of the Recusancy Laws (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1997)
^ John Martin Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk: A Quincentennial History (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1982)
^ James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London: Longman, 1995) 8-12. Brundage,
^ "Statistics". Catholic Bishops' Conference. Retrieved 10 March 2025.
^ "Leader comment: Census reality," Church Times, 12/7/22. All denominations would include Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Non-Conformists, and unaffiliated Christians. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/2-december/comment/leader-comment/leader-comment-census-reality.
^ Leyshon, Dr Gareth (August 2004). "Catholic Statistics Priests and Population in England and Wales, 1841 – 2001" (PDF). drgareth.info. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
^ "Numbers Game," The Tablet, 31 October 2009, 16.
^ "Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 8 November 2017. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
^ Robert Booth, Pamala Duncan, and Carmen Aguilar Garcia, "England and Wales now minority Christian countries, census reveals," The Guardian, 28 Nov 2022.
^ Tim Wyatt, "British Social Attitudes finds 'C of E' respondents halved in 15 years,' Church Times, 07 September 2018.
^ David Voas, "Christian decline: How it is measured and what it means," www.brin.ac.uk/christian-decline-how-its-measured-and-what-it means/ January 25, 2023.
^ "The Catholic Vote in Britain Helped Carry Blair To Victory". Ipsos Mori. 23 May 2005. Retrieved 12 May 2020. There are considerable regional variations, of course, Catholics being most widespread in London, Scotland and particularly the North-West (where one in five are Catholic)
^ David M. Cheney, "Great Britain, Statistics by Diocese, by Catholic Population [Catholic hierarchy]" (http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/).
^ Kevin Phillips, The Cousins' Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 480–484. Phillips notes: "the subjection [of the Irish] of the seventeenth century was almost complete. ... During the first quarter of the eighteenth century [after the Treaty of Union], Catholic bishops were banned and priests required to register. Catholics lost their right to vote, hold office, own a gun or a horse worth more than £5, or live in towns without paying special fees....Once again the Irish were pushed west to poorer lands, an exodus that prefigured the disposition of the American Indians over the next two centuries."

[1] "Sul y Genhadaeth Gartref" (PDF). cbcew.org.uk (in Welsh). 16 September 2012.

[2] "St. Augustine of Canterbury", The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 3 April 2019 from New Advent.

[3] Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 625: "The early Reformation gained a curious sort of victory in England, where the murderously opinionated monarch Henry VIII found an alliance with Reformers useful during his eccentric marital adventures."

[4] Dairmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation, Viking, 2004, p. 194.

[5] MacCulloch, The Reformation, 279-280.

[cathrob-6] Pollen, John Hungerford (1911). "Robert Persons" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11.

[7] Rothery, Mark; French, Henry, eds. (2012). Making Men: The Formation of Elite Male Identities in England, c.1660-1900 - A Sourcebook. Macmillan International Higher Education. p. xxxv. ISBN 978-1-1370-0281-5.

[8] Schofield, Nicholas (2009). The English vicars apostolic, 1688-1850. Gerard Skinner. Oxford: Family Publications. ISBN 978-1-907380-01-3. OCLC 630165901.

[9] 'Lincoln's Inn Fields: The Church of SS. Anselm and Cecilia', in Survey of London: Volume 3, St Giles-in-The-Fields, Pt I: Lincoln's Inn Fields, ed. W Edward Riley and Laurence Gomme (London, 1912), pp. 81-84. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol3/pt1/pp81-84 [accessed 31 July 2020].

[10] Antonia Fraser, The King and the Catholics (New York: Doubleday, 2018), 25.

[11] Brian Magee, The English Recusants, A Study of Post-Reformation Catholic Survival and the Operation of the Recusancy Laws (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1997)

[12] John Martin Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk: A Quincentennial History (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1982)

[13] James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London: Longman, 1995) 8-12. Brundage,

[14] "Statistics". Catholic Bishops' Conference. Retrieved 10 March 2025.

[15] "Leader comment: Census reality," Church Times, 12/7/22. All denominations would include Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Non-Conformists, and unaffiliated Christians. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/2-december/comment/leader-comment/leader-comment-census-reality.

[Leyshon-16] Leyshon, Dr Gareth (August 2004). "Catholic Statistics Priests and Population in England and Wales, 1841 – 2001" (PDF). drgareth.info. Retrieved 27 January 2019.

[17] "Numbers Game," The Tablet, 31 October 2009, 16.

[18] "Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 8 November 2017. Retrieved 31 December 2022.

[19] Robert Booth, Pamala Duncan, and Carmen Aguilar Garcia, "England and Wales now minority Christian countries, census reveals," The Guardian, 28 Nov 2022.

[20] Tim Wyatt, "British Social Attitudes finds 'C of E' respondents halved in 15 years,' Church Times, 07 September 2018.

[21] David Voas, "Christian decline: How it is measured and what it means," www.brin.ac.uk/christian-decline-how-its-measured-and-what-it means/ January 25, 2023.

[22] "The Catholic Vote in Britain Helped Carry Blair To Victory". Ipsos Mori. 23 May 2005. Retrieved 12 May 2020. There are considerable regional variations, of course, Catholics being most widespread in London, Scotland and particularly the North-West (where one in five are Catholic)

[23] David M. Cheney, "Great Britain, Statistics by Diocese, by Catholic Population [Catholic hierarchy]" (http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/).

[24] Kevin Phillips, The Cousins' Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 480–484. Phillips notes: "the subjection [of the Irish] of the seventeenth century was almost complete. ... During the first quarter of the eighteenth century [after the Treaty of Union], Catholic bishops were banned and priests required to register. Catholics lost their right to vote, hold office, own a gun or a horse worth more than £5, or live in towns without paying special fees....Once again the Irish were pushed west to poorer lands, an exodus that prefigured the disposition of the American Indians over the next two centuries."

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