Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other government officials held bilateral meetings with Pope Francis and Cardinal Pietro Parolin on July 27, 2022, during the pope’s trip to that country. / Credit: pool VAMP
Denver Newsroom, Oct 27, 2022 / 19:00 pm (CNA).
The Catholic population in Canada has declined by almost 2 million people in the last 10 years, the Canadian census has found in a report that indicates the religiously unaffiliated now outnumber Catholics.
The latest census figures, compiled in 2021, show the Catholic Canadian population has declined to 10.9 million. Catholics now make up about 29.9% of the country’s people. According to the 2011 census, the Catholic population that year was 12.8 million.
Just 53.3% of Canadians, 19.3 million people, now identify as Christian, a decline from 67.3% in 2011 and 77.1% in 2001. Statistics Canada, Canada’s national statistical office, presented the latest figures in an Oct. 26 report.
Catholicism is still the most popular religious affiliation in all provinces and territories except for Nunavut, the sparse population of which has a large Anglican component.
Quebec is the only majority Catholic province, but Catholic numbers declined “considerably,” Statistics Canada said. In 2011, 74.7% of Quebec residents reported that they were Catholic. The 2021 figures indicate 53.8% of Quebec residents identified as Catholic.
CNA contacted the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Archdiocese of Quebec for comment but did not receive a response by publication.
Among other Christian identities in Canada, the most numerous are the 7.6% of Canadians who identify as Christian without specifying a denomination. This is double the proportion from 2011.
About 3% of Canadians are adherents to the United Church of Canada, a mainline ecclesial community, and another 3% belong to the Anglican Church. Orthodox Christians, Baptists, and Pentecostal and other Charismatic Christians make up the remainder.
Among Christians, only the Orthodox Christian population and the non-specific Christian population grew in the last decade.
Religious practice has also declined. A separate Canada Statistics summary, released in October 2021, said that in 2019 only about 20% of Canadians attended group religious activities at least monthly. This compares to 40% of Canadians who reported the same in 1985. Women were more likely than men to declare a religious affiliation, as were people born in older generations.
The religiously unaffiliated now make up 34.6% of the Canadian population, according to Statistics Canada’s latest report.
Some regions are less affiliated than others. Almost 60% of the people in Yukon are religiously unaffiliated, as are 52% of those in British Columbia.
Non-Christian religious adherents make up 12.1% of Canada’s population.
About 5% of Canadians are Muslim. Their population has doubled in size since 2011. About 2.3% of Canadians are Hindu and 2.1% are Sikh. The Jewish population numbers about 335,000, a slight increase over the last decade, but their proportion of Canadians has declined to 0.9%. They are slightly outnumbered by self-identified Buddhists.
Non-Christian religious adherents disproportionately live in large urban centers and their numbers have increased largely due to immigration. They make up 16.3% of the population in Ontario, with Muslims and Hindus the most populous. About 16.7% of British Columbia residents adhere to non-Christian religions and Canada’s Sikhs have their largest presence there.
Canada’s 1.8-million indigenous people are largely unaffiliated, with 47% reporting no affiliation. About 26.9% identified as Catholic. Only 81,000 people overall, about 0.2 percent of the total Canadian population, reported adhering to a traditional Indigenous spirituality.
Catholic involvement with government-subsidized residential schools for Indigenous Canadians has come under scrutiny in recent decades because of these schools’ efforts to eradicate indigenous culture and assimilate children to the dominant culture. Many of the schools were poorly run and poorly funded, while staff could be negligent or even abusive towards children. Thousands of children died of injury, neglect or diseases like tuberculosis, often at a rate far higher than other children in Canada.
In 2021, reports suggested there were several hundred unmarked graves at two former residential schools. Though the suspected graves have not been exhumed, the reports led to a wave of protests and burnings and vandalism of churches, including churches that still serve Indigenous communities.
The number of hate-based incidents targeting Catholics increased by more than 260% between 2020 and 2021, according to crime figures from Statistics Canada.
Pope Francis visited Canada in 2022 to apologize for Catholics’ role in the residential schools.
In addition to abuse scandals, Canadian law and culture continue to diverge from Catholic belief on abortion, euthanasia, and LGBT issues. There are also disputes over the identity and effectiveness of Catholic schools, some of which are state-funded but supervised by elected lay Catholics, not Church officials. These could be other factors in the decline of Catholic numbers in Canada.
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If the Pope is correct to say this to Ukraine then he is wrong to restrict the TLM.
Compare this quick action to defend Russian Orthodoxy versus papal inaction to defend the Catholic Faith after the Paris Opening Blasphemies.
Exactly right on both counts, dear Fool.
“Churches are not to be touched!”???
Hah!
Unless they offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the same way it’s been offered for scores of generations.
Here contrary to disagreement, in instances conscientious resistance to the moral and structural policies including softening of perennial doctrine of Francis I, I’m in agreement with his stance on religious freedom, particularly the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian Churches. He holds the same correct position in Ukraine as well as Russia.
Taking that into account, our dilemma is the West, and Roman Catholicism’s lack of coherency to its doctrines in practice, whereas Russian Orthodoxy in particular can claim far greater adherence to moral principles both Churches share. Abortion in Russia is limited to 12 weeks after conception – the US and most of Europe abortion is open season. Homosexuality is permitted in Russia between consenting adults, beyond that it’s prohibited under severe penalty, particularly LGBT promotion. It’s homosexuality in all its disordered forms that will destroy America unless the Church takes a strong stand against, which it doesn’t under Francis I who gives indication of acceptance.
Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church insofar as these key moral positions are now actually the world’s primary challenge to the moral decay of the West, including the Zelensky government and Ukraine. Although war with Ukraine has other political motives besides religion. Nevertheless it’s a factor. And likely why PM Orbán of Hungary with a large Catholic population is leaning toward Putin’s Russia due to EU opposition to his policies against the Gay conglomerate and its growing prominence in the West.
As usual, I agree with Father Morello. And I offer a few thoughts of my own.
The Russians’ contempt for the moral abyss into which the West has fallen is at the core of their struggle to keep Ukraine out of NATO and the EU. (It also has perfectly legitimate geopolitical motives.)This is written off by Western elites as “authoritarian contempt for ‘democracy'”. But we who are subject to those elites know all too well what they mean by “democracy”.
It was the Clinton/Bush/Obama neocon “nation builders” who thrust NATO and the EU up to the western frontiers of the Russian rump state that Putin now leads. Biden, as their proconsul, and the Biden family grifters fomented the so-called “Maidan revolution”, which overthrew the duly elected Ukrainian government and encouraged the subsequent Zelensky government to pursue a ruthless ethnic cleansing campaign in the Donbas. The alleged Russian aggression in Crimea merely undid the phoney “transfer” by the Ukrainian Soviet boss, Khruschev, of the peninsula from the Russian FSSR to the Ukrainian SSR, during the 1950s — all in the Soviet Communist family.
I long since have given up trying to read the mind of Pope Francis. It may well be that his view is grounded in the neo-Pelagian modernist quicksand of Dignitatis Humanae. But, from my perspective as an indietrist, an historic Christian people (albeit, regrettably, one whose church is in schism) have a duty to express resistance to a militantly secularist regime that afflicts their country.
I pray (as I did this morning, the Rosary in Latin, with a small congregation made up largely of Roman Catholic Poles and Ukrainians) for peace in Ukraine. Let us not forget that, when in 1917 Our Lady of Fatima asked for prayers for the conversion of “Russia” and for its consecration to her Immaculate Heart, “Russia” was “all the Russias”, including Ukraine. Maybe, after all, Francis got the consecration right in the way he proclaimed it a few years ago!
You cannot licitly fight evil by means of another evil. The Russian Orthodox Church is a schismatic and heretical Tsar-worshipping, warmongering sect that is out of communion with the rest of Orthodoxy, let alone Rome.
Russia is the abortion capital of the world, with regular church attendance in the low single figures, much lower than in Poland and Ukraine. In the territory of Ukraine under Russian occupation, there is no Catholic life at all, nor any Christian life other than that overseen by the Patriarchate of Moscow.
Yes Michael, Russia has the world’s highest abortion rate. Although it has a higher birth rate than some European nations. Example: Birth and death rate per increment of 1000 persons
UK 10/9.5 Poland 7.4/11.1 Russia 8.9/11.3 France 9.9/9.2 Italy 6.4/11.2 Spain 6.7/9.0 Germany 8.3/12.3 Institute National D’etudes Démographique. Russia has a higher birth rate than Poland, Italy, Germany, and Spain, while death rates except Spain are similar. What that likely indicates is greater usage of abortifacients and contraceptives in Italy, Poland, and Spain v abortions in Russia.
I agree with your assessment of Archbishop of Moscow Kirill and the Russian myth of a greater universal Russia. My comment was not to imply Russia is a moral paragon, rather based on face value it is better disposed on those moral issues.
“You cannot licitly fight evil by means of another evil. The Russian Orthodox Church is a schismatic and heretical Tsar-worshipping, warmongering sect that is out of communion with the rest of Orthodoxy, let alone Rome.”
I agree with you re: one should never fight evil by means of siding with another evil. Your description of the Russian Orthodox Church is a bit off. For a start, it does not worship tsar but there is a sect of so-called “tsarebozhiki” who worship emperor Nicholas II, considering him to be a co-redemptor with Our Lord. This sect was condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church. Also, there is an antiwar resistance within the Russian Orthodox Church and many priests were prohibited to serve or even arrested as a result of their activities. As for schismatics, “no, it is you (Catholics) who are schismatics because you broke off from the true Church” as any Orthodox (especially Greek) would say to you. Also, common believers learnt not to take mutual excommunications too seriously – if they did, we would not have a centuries-long precedent of Roman Catholics receiving communion in the Russian Orthodox Church and vice versa (please check how Catherine the Great saved Jesuits and how Catholic and Orthodox worshiped together in the USSR – persecution tends to release people from secondary things).
Now to the current affairs: there is a natural evil and there is an unnatural evil. Natural evil is practiced by Russia and like-minded. It is murder, slavery and so on, brutality without sophistication, cruelty which is not ashamed of looking cruel. Unnatural evil is transhumanism, transgender ideology, euthanasia “for the sake of preservation of dignity” and so on. It is the evil which is afraid of being seen as such so it covers itself with various “for your own good”. Russia (Putin) is the natural evil, West (Biden) is an unnatural evil. They are like two apocalyptic beasts, two types of human psyche clashing. People choose what they prefer. Personally, I prefer natural evil because it is at least straightforward. The unnatural evil repels me much more. Yet, being a Christian I know that I must not choose any but stick to Christ.
Most importantly, b of those evils are postmodern. That means Putin is not Orthodox and Biden is not Catholic. Putin represents a FAKE RUSSIA and Biden represents a FAKE WEST. Hence one who chooses either chooses a fake.
If you read my comment, you’ll see that it says that the Russian Church is in schism from Orthodoxy, let alone from Rome. So either way, the Russians are in schism. The Russian Church always was unique in the extent of its subjection to the Tsars, which was even more abject than elsewhere in Orthodoxy.
I am glad that my comment seemed to cause you to reduce your generalisations a bit (from “heretical Tsar-worshipping” to more realistic “The Russian Church always was unique in the extent of its subjection to the Tsars, which was even more abject than elsewhere in Orthodoxy”). Indeed, the Russian Church has been severely oppressed since Peter the Great who abolished the instruction of Patriarchs. The fact that the Russian Orthodox Church elected the Patriarch immediately after it got freedom from the state after the 1917 revolution, shows that the Church knew it was an abnormal situation – at least the vibrant part of it which later was martyred or went into catacombs. I am a product of that free-thinking Church which never ceased to exist. It is the Church of Fr Edelstein, Fr Alexander Men, nun Juliana (Sokolova) and many others.
“If you read my comment, you’ll see that it says that the Russian Church is in schism from Orthodoxy, let alone from Rome. So, either way, the Russians are in schism.”
Again, a generalization. The Russian Orthodox Church broke a communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the latter giving an autocephalic status to the Ukrainian Church. Ecumenical Patriarchate is not (whole) “Orthodoxy”. Some local Churches supported Constantinople, some did not. It is a very sad event but it has happened in the life of the Orthodox Church before. Common believers, especially abroad, usually disregard that.
And yet he refuses to condemn the persecution of Catholics in communist dictatorships like Nicaragua, Venezuela and China.
There is a prophecy of Garabandal I and many others believe is coming during this pontificate. The prophecy is that a pope will make a trip to Moscow and as soon as he returns to the Vatican, “hostilities will break out in different parts of Europe.” This is in light of the message of Fatima. Francis is a globalist, and it is difficult to tell what his agendas are when he seems to make a comment such as this. He sides with China and shut down churches during Covid… I think he is working for the new word order that will come out of the crisis. He is always speaking of global human fraternity as if it is above the importance of Catholic doctrine and truth. Watch for a trip to Russia in 2025 to kick of the prophesied tribulation.
For once, I have to agree with PF.
I would be inclined to defer to the local Catholic bishop on this one, someone who knows what’s going on. I would like to hear a bit more from the Vatican about Russia attacking and destroying Ukrainian cities.
What the above comment illustrates is how far Roman Catholic Christianity has drifted from its own essential doctrines revealed to it by its author Jesus Christ.
Our Synod on Synodality process underway to assertedly renew and revitalize the Church reduces our Apostolic successors the bishops to facilitators for a diversity of Catholic and non Catholic laity committed to a search for meaning of Synodality with pretense of adopting the Jesuit discernment method by listening to the expected voice of the Holy Spirit for new revelation – defies both reason and St Ignatius’ methodology resulting in acceleration of the drift to a riptide. Resolution. Return to the Cross of Christ and revealed doctrine.
This is definitely a 50/50 argument. I’m
guessing that one of the reasons why Pope Francis doesn’t support this law is because he wants the Russian Orthodox to one day return to full communion with Rome. One the other hand, Abp Metropolitan Shevchuk’s support of the law makes for a compelling debate since the UGCC is a sui iuris (self governing) autonomous Church in full communion with Rome. Everything considered, I believe that Russian Orthodox faithful aren’t bad people. But Moscow Patriarch Kirill is a disgrace.
I think this act of Francis’ points up what so many have sensed: he is less ‘homo religiosus’ than he is ‘homo politico.’
Francis injects himself into the profane arena when it suits his own political proclivities. He sends a new papal nuncio to Venezuela after a three-year hiatus to send an approval signal to the dictatorship of the Maduro government. He says nothing about the persecution of the Church by the Marxist Daniel Ortega. He allows the dictatorial communist rulers of a billion Chinese to choose Catholic bishops, etc., etc. At the same time, he hates America, the Catholic Church in America, the Latin Mass, and traditional Catholic values. He gives protection to prelates who promote the desacralization of the Catholic Church.
We see Francis more clearly with every passing day by where he places his priorities.
How many churches have to be burned down or priests arrested for you lot to stop idolizing Putin?