Facts About Religion in Italy

Overall, some 81% of Italian citizens are Roman Catholic. About 97% of native-born Italians are Catholics by baptism, but only one-third of them attend Mass regularly. The Roman Catholic Church exerts more influence among women and children than among men, more in the rural zones than in the cities, and more in the south than in the north, with the possible exception of the region of Venetia. About 400,000 Italians are Jehovah's Witnesses. Of the non–Roman Catholic Christians, Protestants make up the largest group, numbering some 100,000. Nearly one-third of these are Waldenses, living mainly in the Alpine valleys west of Turin. Others, such as Baptists and Methodists, live chiefly in Rome and in the larger industrial cities of the north. Members of the Greek Orthodox Church live mainly in the south.
 
Muslims now constitute a significant religious minority in Italy, owing largely to an influx of immigrants from Albania, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. The Muslim population is estimated to number approximately 1 million.
 
Jews tended, after the Middle Ages, to concentrate in port cities such as Venice, Genoa, and Leghorn (Livorno). Most of them became well assimilated into Italian cultural life. The anti-Semitic decrees of Mussolini in 1938, however, caused many of Italy's Jews to emigrate, while many more perished in German concentration camps during World War II. Jews in Italy currently number some 30,000.
 
A major revision of the 1929 Lateran concordat, which regulated relations between the Vatican and the state, went into effect in 1985, after 15 years of negotiations. Under the new arrangement, Italy continues to recognize Vatican City as an independent sovereign state but Roman Catholicism is no longer the state religion. Priests no longer receive part of their pay from the state. Catholic religious education is available in state schools only to those children whose parents specifically request it. Rome no longer has the status of a "sacred city." In addition, the Vatican agreed to turn over Jewish catacombs to the Italian state. The new concordat reflected the significant secularization that took place in Italy after the 1960s, including the legalization of divorce and of abortion under certain circumstances. After revision of the Lateran Concordat, the small Waldensian Church became the first religious group to sign an accord (intesa) with the government entitling it to certain privileges; accords with other groups followed.

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