Catholic Church in the Netherlands

Catholic Church in the Netherlands
Dutch: Rooms-katholiek kerkgenootschap in Nederland
St Catherine's Cathedral, Utrecht.
Type	National polity
Classification	Catholic
Orientation	Latin
Governance	Episcopal
Pope	Pope Francis
President	Bishop Hans van den Hende
Primate	Cardinal Wim Eijk
Apostolic Nuncio	Aldo Cavalli
Region	Netherlands
Language	Dutch, Latin
Headquarters	St Catherine's Cathedral, Utrecht
Separations	Mennonites (1540) Dutch Reformed Church (1571) Old Catholic Church (1724)
Members	4,332,020
Official website	Episcopal Conference of the Netherlands

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,^[1] forming some 23%^[2][3] of the Dutch people, based on in-depth interviewing, down from 40% in the 1960s.

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 of affiliation starting two decades earlier than in Dutch Catholicism.^[4] In 2021, there were an estimated 3.7 million in the Netherlands, 21.7% of the population,^[5] down from more than 40% in the 1970s. The Catholic Church in the Netherlands has suffered an official membership loss of 650,000 members between 2003 (4,532,000 pers. / 27.9% overall population) and 2015 (3,882,000 pers. / 22.9% overall population).^[6] The number of people registered as Catholic in the Netherlands continues to decrease, roughly by half a percent annually.

North Brabant and Limburg have been historically the most Catholic parts of the Netherlands, and Catholicism and some of its traditions now form a cultural identity rather than a religious identity for people there. The majority of the Catholic population is now largely irreligious in practice, in line with the rest of the Dutch population. Research among self-identified Catholics in the Netherlands in 2007 showed that 27% could be regarded as theist; 55% as ietsist, deist, or agnostic; and 17% as atheist.^[7] In 2015, 13% of self-identified Dutch Catholics believed in the existence of heaven; 17% in a personal God; and fewer than half believe that Jesus was the Son of God or sent by God.^[8]

Church attendance by Catholics has decreased in recent decades to 98,600 or 2.7% of Dutch Catholics in a regular weekend of May 2022.^[9]

In December 2011 a report was published by Wim Deetman, a former Dutch Minister of Education, detailing child abuse within the Catholic Church in the Netherlands: 1,800 instances of abuse "by clergy or volunteers within Dutch Catholic dioceses" were reported to have occurred since 1945.^[10]