Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics and opposition to the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
, its
clergy
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
, and its adherents. Scholars have identified four categories of anti-Catholicism: constitutional-national, theological, popular and socio-cultural.
At various points after the
Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the p ...
, many majority-
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
states, including
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
,
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
,
Prussia
Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...
and
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
,
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
, and the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, turned anti-Catholicism, opposition to the authority of Catholic clergy (
anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is opposition to clergy, religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historically, anti-clericalism in Christian traditions has been opposed to the influence of Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secul ...
), opposition to the authority of the pope (
anti-papalism), mockery of
Catholic rituals, and opposition to Catholic adherents into major political themes and policies of
religious discrimination and
religious persecution
Religious persecution is the systematic oppression of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religion, religious beliefs or affiliations or their irreligion, lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within socie ...
.
Major examples of populist groups that have targeted Catholics in recent history include
Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland during
the Troubles
The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...
and the
second Ku Klux Klan in the United States.
Historically, Catholics who lived in Protestant countries were frequently
suspected of conspiring against the state in furtherance of papal interests. In majority Protestant countries which experienced large scale
immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...
, such as the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
, suspicion of Catholic immigrants and/or discrimination against them frequently overlapped or was conflated with
nativist,
xenophobic
Xenophobia (from (), 'strange, foreign, or alien', and (), 'fear') is the fear or dislike of anything that is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between an in-gr ...
,
ethnocentric and/or
racist
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
sentiments (e.g.
anti-Irish sentiment
Anti-Irish sentiment, also Hibernophobia, is bigotry against the Irish people or individuals. It can include hatred, oppression, persecution, as well as simple discrimination. Generally, it could be bigotry against people from the island of Ire ...
,
anti-Filipino sentiment,
anti-Italianism,
anti-Spanish sentiment, and
anti-Slavic sentiment, specifically
anti-Polish sentiment).
In the
early modern period
The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...
, anti-clerical governments often attacked the Pope's ability to appoint bishops in order to ensure that the Church
would not be independent from the State, confiscated Church property, expelled
Catholic religious orders such as the
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, banned
Classical Christian education, and sought to replace it with a State-controlled school system.
In primarily Protestant countries
Protestant Reformers, including
Martin Luther
Martin Luther ( ; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, Theology, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and former Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. Luther was the seminal figure of the Reformation, Pr ...
,
John Calvin
John Calvin (; ; ; 10 July 150927 May 1564) was a French Christian theology, theologian, pastor and Protestant Reformers, reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of C ...
,
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, Christianity, Christian reformer, Catholic priest, and a theology professor at the University of Oxfor ...
,
Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is known for his Wives of Henry VIII, six marriages and his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. ...
,
Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a theologian, leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He is honoured as a Oxford Martyrs, martyr ...
,
John Thomas,
Ellen G. White,
John Knox
John Knox ( – 24 November 1572) was a Scottish minister, Reformed theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country's Reformation. He was the founder of the Church of Scotland.
Born in Giffordgate, a street in Haddington, East Lot ...
,
Charles Taze Russell,
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...
,
Roger Williams,
Cotton Mather, and
John Wesley
John Wesley ( ; 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a principal leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies ...
, as well as most
Protestants
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
of the 16th–19th centuries, identified the
Papacy with the Antichrist. The
Centuriators of Magdeburg, a group of
Lutheran
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...
scholars in
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; ) is the Capital city, capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is on the Elbe river.
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archbishopric of Mag ...
which was headed by
Matthias Flacius
Matthias Flacius Illyricus (Latin; ) or Francovich () (3 March 1520 – 11 March 1575) was a Lutheran reformer from Istria, present-day Croatia. He was notable as a theologian, sometimes dissenting strongly with his fellow Lutherans, and as a sch ...
, wrote the 12-volume ''
Magdeburg Centuries'' in order to discredit the Papacy and lead other Christians to recognize the Pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the
Lutheran–Catholic dialogue notes,
Doctrinal works of literature which were published by the
Lutherans, the
Reformed churches, the
Presbyterians, the
Baptists
Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...
, the
Anabaptists, and the
Methodists contain references to the Pope as the Antichrist, including the
Smalcald Articles, Article 4 (1537), the ''
Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope'' (1537), the
Westminster Confession
The Westminster Confession of Faith, or simply the Westminster Confession, is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it beca ...
, Article 25.6 (1646), and the
1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4. In 1754,
John Wesley
John Wesley ( ; 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a principal leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies ...
published his ''
Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament'', which is currently an official Doctrinal Standard of the
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant Christian denomination, denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was ...
. In his notes on the
Book of Revelation (chapter 13), he commented: "The whole succession of Popes from
Gregory VII are undoubtedly Antichrists. Yet this hinders not, but that the last Pope in this succession will be more eminently the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, adding to that of his predecessors a peculiar degree of wickedness from the bottomless pit."
Referring to the Book of Revelation,
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for ...
stated that "The advantage of turning those mysterious prophecies against the
See of Rome
See or SEE may refer to:
* Visual perception
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Music:
** ''See'' (album), studio album by rock band The Rascals
*** "See", song by The Rascals, on the album ''See''
** "See" (Tycho song), song by Tycho
* Televisio ...
, inspired the Protestants with uncommon veneration for so useful an ally." Protestants condemned the Catholic policy of mandatory
celibacy
Celibacy (from Latin ''caelibatus'') is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, the term ''celibacy'' is applied ...
for priests.
During the
Enlightenment Era, which spanned the 17th and 18th centuries, with its strong emphasis on the need for
religious toleration, the
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a Catholic Inquisitorial system#History, judicial procedure where the Ecclesiastical court, ecclesiastical judges could initiate, investigate and try cases in their jurisdiction. Popularly it became the name for various med ...
was a favorite target of attack for intellectuals.
British Empire
Great Britain
Institutional anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland began with the
English Reformation
The English Reformation began in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away first from the authority of the pope and bishops Oath_of_Supremacy, over the King and then from some doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church ...
under
Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is known for his Wives of Henry VIII, six marriages and his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. ...
, and the
Scottish Reformation
The Scottish Reformation was the process whereby Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland broke away from the Catholic Church, and established the Protestant Church of Scotland. It forms part of the wider European 16th-century Protestant Reformation.
Fr ...
under
John Knox
John Knox ( – 24 November 1572) was a Scottish minister, Reformed theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country's Reformation. He was the founder of the Church of Scotland.
Born in Giffordgate, a street in Haddington, East Lot ...
. The
Act of Supremacy of 1534 declared the
English crown to be "the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England" in place of the pope. Any act of allegiance to the latter was considered treasonous because the papacy claimed to have both spiritual and political power over its followers. It was under this act that saints
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, theologian, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VII ...
and
John Fisher were executed and became martyrs for the Catholic faith.
Queen Mary, Henry's daughter, was a devout Catholic. She tried to reverse the Reformation during her five years as Queen (1553-1558), marrying the Catholic king of Spain and executing Protestant leaders. Protestants reviled her as "Bloody Mary".

Anti-Catholicism among many of the English and Scots was not only grounded in their fear that the pope sought to reimpose religio-spiritual authority over England and Scotland, it was also grounded in their fear that the pope also sought to impose secular power over them in alliance with their arch-enemies France and Spain. In 1570,
Pope Pius V sought to depose Elizabeth I of England with the
papal bull
A papal bull is a type of public decree, letters patent, or charter issued by the pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the leaden Seal (emblem), seal (''bulla (seal), bulla'') traditionally appended to authenticate it.
History
Papal ...
''
Regnans in Excelsis'', which declared that she was a heretic and purportedly dissolved the duty of all of Elizabeth's subjects to maintain their allegiance to her. This rendered Elizabeth's subjects who persisted in their allegiance to the Catholic Church politically suspect, and it also made the position of her Catholic subjects largely untenable if they tried to maintain both allegiances at once. The
Recusancy Acts, which made worship in the Anglican Church a legal obligation, date back to Elizabeth's reign.
Assassination plots in which Catholics were prime movers fueled anti-Catholicism in England. These plots included the famous
Gunpowder Plot, in which
Guy Fawkes and other conspirators plotted to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. The fictitious "
Popish Plot" involving
Titus Oates was a hoax that many Protestants believed to be true, exacerbating Anglican-Catholic relations.
The
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also known as the Revolution of 1688, was the deposition of James II and VII, James II and VII in November 1688. He was replaced by his daughter Mary II, Mary II and her Dutch husband, William III of Orange ...
of 1688–1689 involved the overthrow of King James II, of the Stuart dynasty, who favoured the Catholics, and his replacement by a Dutch Protestant. For decades the Stuarts were supported by France in plots to invade and conquer Britain, and anti-Catholicism persisted.
Gordon Riots 1780
The
Gordon Riots of 1780 was a violent anti-Catholic riot in London against the
Papists Act 1778. Passed by
Parliament
In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
, the new law was supposed to reduce official discrimination against
British Catholics.
Lord George Gordon, head of the Protestant Association, warned that the law would enable Catholics who were serving in the
British Army
The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
to become a dangerous threat. The protest evolved into
riot
A riot or mob violence is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people.
Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The p ...
s and widespread
looting
Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or rioting. ...
. Local magistrates feared reprisals and as a result, they did not enforce the riot act. The riots were not suppressed until the Army moved in and dispersed the crowds by shooting them, killing hundreds of rioters. The violence lasted from 2 June to 9 June 1780. Public opinion, especially in middle-class and elite circles, repudiated anti-Catholicism and lower-class violence, and it also rallied behind the
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
of
Lord North. Demands for the establishment of a police force in London were subsequently made.
19th century
Anglo-French conflicts during the
French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Napoleonic Wars
, partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
, image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg
, caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...
, which lasted from 1793 until 1815, saw the rise of anti-Catholicism as an underlying method to unify the Protestant populations of England, Scotland and Wales. Permeating through all
social classes, antagonism towards Catholicism became firmly enmeshed with British
national identity
National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language".
National identity ...
. As noted by English historian
Linda Colley in her seminal work ''Britons: Forging of a Nation 1707–1837'', the "defensive unity brought on by war with a Catholic French '
other' helped transform Great Britain from a new and largely artificial polity into a nation with a strong self-image rooted in Protestantism."
Catholics in Ireland gained the right to vote in the 1790s but they were politically inert for another three decades. Finally, they were mobilized by
Daniel O'Connell into majorities in most of the Irish parliamentary districts. They could only elect, but Catholics could not be seated in parliament. The
Catholic emancipation issue became a major crisis. Previously anti-Catholic politicians led by the
Duke of Wellington and
Robert Peel reversed themselves to prevent massive violence. All Catholics in Britain were "emancipated" in the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829; that is, they were freed from most of the penalties and restrictions they faced. Anti-Catholic attitudes continued, however.
Early 20th century
In 1937, ten young men and boys, aged from 13 to 23, burned to death in a fire on a farm in
Kirkintilloch, Scotland. All were seasonal workers from
Achill Sound in County Mayo, Ireland. ''The Vanguard'', the official newspaper of the
Scottish Protestant League, referred to the event in the following text:
:The Scandal of Kirkintilloch is not that some Irishmen have lost their lives in a fire; it is that Irish Papists brought up in disloyalty and superstition are engaged in jobs which should belong by right to Scottish Protestants.
:The Kirkintilloch sensation again reminds the People of Scotland that Rome's Irish Scum still over-run our land.
Since 1945
Since
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, anti-Catholic feeling in England, Scotland and Wales has abated somewhat. Ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics culminated in the first meeting between an Archbishop of Canterbury and a Pope since the Reformation when Archbishop
Geoffrey Fisher visited Rome in 1960. Since then, the dialogue has continued through envoys and standing conferences. Meanwhile, the nonconformist churches such as the Methodists, the Church of Scotland, and the established Church of England, have all dramatically declined in membership. Membership in the Catholic Church continues to grow in Britain, thanks to the immigration of Irish and more recently, the immigration of Polish workers.
[J.R.H. Moorman (1973) ''A History of the Church in England''. London, A&C Black: 457]
Conflict and rivalry between Catholicism and Protestantism since the 1920s, especially since the 1960s, has centered on
the Troubles
The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...
in
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
.
Anti-Catholicism in Britain was long represented by the burning of an effigy of the Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes during widespread celebrations of
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration list of minor secular observances#November, observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and firewor ...
every 5 November. However, this celebration has lost most of its anti-Catholic connotations. According to Clive D. Field, only faint remnants of anti-Catholicism are found today.
Ireland
As punishment for the
rebellion of 1641, almost all of the lands which were owned by
Irish Catholics were confiscated and
given to Protestant settlers. Under the
Penal Laws, no Irish Catholic could sit in the
Parliament of Ireland, even though some 90% of Ireland's population was native Irish Catholic when the first of these bans was introduced in 1691. Tensions between Irish Catholics and Protestants have been blamed for much of "
The Troubles
The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...
".
During the 18th century, the
Peep o' Day Boys, an agrarian association composed of Irish Protestants, engaged in numerous acts of anti-Catholic violence through
County Armagh
County Armagh ( ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It is located in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and adjoins the southern shore of Lough Neagh. It borders t ...
. These acts culminated in the
Armagh disturbances, a period of intense sectarian conflict during the 1780's and 1790's between the Peep o' Day Boys and the Catholic
Defenders. The Peep o' Day Boys would conduct early morning raids on Catholic homes to confiscate weapons, which Irish Catholics were forbidden from owning under the Penal Laws. This led to confrontations between them and the Defenders, which culminated in the
Battle of the Diamond, a confrontation which saw six killed and many more wounded. Though the
Orange Order
The Loyal Orange Institution, commonly known as the Orange Order, is an international Protestant fraternal order based in Northern Ireland and primarily associated with Ulster Protestants. It also has lodges in England, Grand Orange Lodge of ...
would denounce the actions of the Peep o' Day Boys, further anti-Catholic violence would continue to erupt in Ireland in the years leading up the
Irish Rebellion of 1798
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ''The Turn out'', ''The Hurries'', 1798 Rebellion) was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate, but subordinate, Kingdom of Ireland. The m ...
.
=Laws which restricted the rights of Irish Catholics
=
The
Great Famine of Ireland was exacerbated by the imposition of anti-Catholic laws. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the
penal laws prohibited Irish Catholics from either purchasing or leasing land, from voting, from holding political office, from living either within away from a corporate town, from obtaining an education, from entering a profession, and doing many of the other things which a person needed to do in order to succeed and prosper in society. The laws were largely reformed under the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, and Catholics could again sit in parliament following the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
came into existence in 1921, following the
Government of Ireland Act 1920. Though Catholics were a majority on the island of Ireland, comprising 74% of the population in 1911, they were a third of the population in Northern Ireland.
In 1934,
Sir James Craig, the first
Prime Minister of Northern Ireland
The prime minister of Northern Ireland was the head of the Government of Northern Ireland (1921–1972), Government of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. No such office was provided for in the Government of Ireland Act 1920; however, the L ...
, said, "Since we took up office we have tried to be absolutely fair towards all the citizens of Northern Ireland... They still boast of
Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State."
In 1957,
Harry Midgley, the
Minister of Education in Northern Ireland, said, in
Portadown
Portadown ( ) is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town is based on the River Bann in the north of the county, about southwest of Belfast. It is in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and had a population ...
Orange Hall, "All the minority are traitors and have always been traitors to the Government of Northern Ireland."
The first Catholic to be appointed a minister in Northern Ireland was
Gerard Newe, in 1971.
In 1986, at the annual conference of the
Democratic Unionist Party, MP for
Mid Ulster William McCrea interrupted councillor Ethel Smyth when she said she regretted the death of Sean Downes, a 24-year-old Catholic civilian who had been killed by a plastic bullet fired by the
RUC during an anti-internment march in
Andersonstown in 1984. McCrea shouted, "No. No. I'll not condemn the death of John Downes
ic No Fenian. Never. No". In Northern Ireland and Scotland, ''Fenian'' is used by some as a derogatory word for Roman Catholics.
In 2001 and 2002, the
Holy Cross dispute occurred in the
Ardoyne area of north
Belfast
Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...
. The Holy Cross school, a Catholic primary school for girls, is situated in the middle of a Protestant area. In June 2001—during the last week of school before the summer break—Protestant
loyalists began
picketing the school, claiming that Catholics were regularly attacking their homes and denying them access to facilities. The picket resumed on 3 September, when the new school term began. For weeks, hundreds of loyalist protesters tried to stop the schoolchildren and their parents from walking to school through their area. Hundreds of
riot police, backed up by
British soldiers, escorted the children and parents through the protest each day. Some protesters shouted
sectarian abuse and threw stones, bricks, fireworks,
blast bombs and urine-filled balloons at the schoolchildren, their parents and the
RUC. The "scenes of frightened Catholic schoolgirls running a gauntlet of abuse from loyalist protesters as they walked to school captured world headlines". Death threats were made against the parents and school staff by the
Red Hand Defenders, a loyalist paramilitary group.
[Heatley, Colm]
''Interface, Flashpoints in Northern Ireland''. Chapter 1: Alliance Avenue and Holy Cross Dispute
Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN)
Canada
Fears of the Catholic Church were quite strong in the 19th century, especially among
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...
and other Protestant Irish immigrants across Canada.
In 1853, the
Gavazzi Riots left 10 dead in Quebec in the wake of Catholic Irish protests against anti-Catholic speeches by ex-monk
Alessandro Gavazzi. The most influential newspaper in Canada, ''
The Globe'' of Toronto, was edited by
George Brown, a Presbyterian immigrant from Ireland who ridiculed and denounced the Catholic Church,
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, priests, nunneries, etc. Irish Protestants remained a political force until the 20th century. Many belonged to the
Orange Order
The Loyal Orange Institution, commonly known as the Orange Order, is an international Protestant fraternal order based in Northern Ireland and primarily associated with Ulster Protestants. It also has lodges in England, Grand Orange Lodge of ...
,
an anti-Catholic organization with chapters across Canada that was most powerful during the late 19th century.
A key leader was
Dalton McCarthy (1836–1898), a Protestant who had immigrated from Ireland. In the late 19th century he mobilized the "Orange" or Protestant Irish, and fiercely fought against Irish Catholics as well as the French Catholics. He especially crusaded for the abolition of the French language in Manitoba and Ontario schools.
In response to the
2021 Canadian Indian residential school gravesite discoveries, numerous churches and monuments in Western Canada have been vandalized or burned down.
French language schools in Canada
One of the most controversial issues was public support for Catholic French-language schools. Although the Confederation Agreement of 1867 guaranteed the status of Catholic schools when they were legalized by provincial governments, disputes erupted in numerous provinces, especially in the
Manitoba Schools Question in the 1890s and in Ontario in the 1910s. In Ontario,
Regulation 17 was a regulation by the Ontario Ministry of Education that restricted the use of French as a language of instruction to the first two years of schooling. French Canada reacted vehemently and lost, dooming its French-language Catholic schools. This was a central reason for French Canada's distance from the
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
effort, as its young men refused to enlist.
Protestant elements succeeded in blocking the growth of French-language Catholic public schools. However, the Irish Catholics generally supported the English language position which was advocated by the Protestants.
Newfoundland
Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population ...
long experienced social and political tensions between the large Irish Catholic working-class, on the one hand and the Anglican elite on the other. In the 1850s, the Catholic bishop organized his flock and made them stalwarts of the Liberal party. Nasty rhetoric was the prevailing style elections; bloody riots were common during the 1861 election. The Protestants narrowly elected
Hugh Hoyles as the Conservative Prime Minister. Hoyles unexpectedly reversed his long record of militant Protestant activism and worked to defuse tensions. He shared patronage and power with the Catholics; all jobs and patronage were split between the various religious bodies on a per capita basis. This 'denominational compromise' was further extended to education when all religious schools were put on the basis which the Catholics had enjoyed since the 1840s. Alone in North America Newfoundland had a state funded system of denominational schools. The compromise worked and politics ceased to be about religion and became concerned with purely political and economic issues.
Australia
The presence of
Catholicism in Australia came with the 1788 arrival of the
First Fleet
The First Fleet were eleven British ships which transported a group of settlers to mainland Australia, marking the beginning of the History of Australia (1788–1850), European colonisation of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessel ...
of British convict ships at Sydney. The colonial authorities blocked a Catholic clerical presence until 1820, reflecting the legal disabilities of Catholics in Britain. Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion and authorities remained suspicious of the minority religion.
Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services and their children and orphans were raised as Anglicans.
The first Catholic priests to arrive came as convicts following the Irish
1798 Rebellion. In 1803,
Fr James Dixon was conditionally emancipated and permitted to celebrate Mass, but following the Irish led
Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804, Dixon's permission was revoked. Fr
Jeremiah Flynn, an Irish
Cistercian
The Cistercians (), officially the Order of Cistercians (, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, as well as the contri ...
, was appointed as
Prefect Apostolic of
New Holland and set out uninvited from Britain for the colony. Watched by authorities, Flynn secretly performed priestly duties before being arrested and deported to London. Reaction to the affair in Britain led to two further priests being allowed to travel to the colony in 1820.
The
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...
was disestablished in the Colony of New South Wales by the ''
Church Act of 1836''. Drafted by the Catholic attorney-general
John Plunkett, the act established legal equality for Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.
By the late 19th century approximately a quarter of the population of Australia were
Irish Australians. Many were descended from the 40,000 Irish Catholics who were transported as convicts to Australia before 1867. The majority consisted of British and Irish Protestants. The Catholics dominated the labour unions and the Labor Party. The growth of school systems in the late 19th century typically involved religious issues, pitting Protestants against Catholics. The issue of independence for Ireland was long a sore point, until the matter was resolved by the
Irish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence (), also known as the Anglo-Irish War, was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and Unite ...
.
Limited freedom of belief is protected by
Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia, but
sectarianism in Australia was prominent (though generally nonviolent) in the 20th century, flaring during the
First World War
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, again reflecting Ireland's place within the Empire, and the Catholic minority remained subject to discrimination and suspicion. During the First World War, the Irish gave support for the war effort and comprised 20% of the army in France. However, the labour unions and the Irish in particular, strongly opposed conscription, and in alliance with like-minded farmers, defeated it in national plebiscites in
1916 and
1917. The Anglicans in particular talked of Catholic "disloyalty". By the 1920s, Australia had its
first Catholic prime minister.
During the 1950s, the split in the Australian Labor Party between allies and opponents of the Catholic anti-Communist
B. A. Santamaria meant that the party (in Victoria and Queensland more than elsewhere) was effectively divided between pro-Catholic and anti-Catholic elements. As a result of such disunity the ALP was defeated at every single national election between 1955 and 1972. In the late 20th century, the Catholic Church replaced the Anglican Church as the largest single
Christian body in Australia; and it continues to be so in the 21st century, although it still has fewer members than do the various Protestant churches combined.
While older sectarian divides declined, commentators have observed a re-emergence of anti-Catholicism in Australia in recent decades amid rising secularism and broader
anti-Christian movements.
New Zealand
According to
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
Michael King, the situation in New Zealand has never been as clear as in Australia.
Catholics first arrived in New Zealand in 1769, and the Church has had a continuous presence in the country from the time of permanent settlement by
Irish Catholics in the 1820s, with the first Maori converted to Catholicism in the 1830s. The signing of the
Treaty of Waitangi
The Treaty of Waitangi (), sometimes referred to as ''Te Tiriti'', is a document of central importance to the history of New Zealand, Constitution of New Zealand, its constitution, and its national mythos. It has played a major role in the tr ...
in 1840, which formalised New Zealand's status as a British colony and instigated substantial immigration from
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
and
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
, resulted in the country developing a predominantly
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
religious character. Nonetheless,
French bishop
A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...
Jean Baptiste Pompallier was able to negotiate the inclusion of a clause guaranteeing
freedom of religion
Freedom of religion or religious liberty, also known as freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice ...
in some of the versions of the treaties signed and oral promises during meetings beforehand.
New Zealand has had several Catholic
prime ministers, which is indicative of the widespread acceptance of Catholicism within the country;
Jim Bolger, who lead the
Fourth National Government of the 1990s, was the country's fourth Catholic prime minister;
Bill English, who lead the
Fifth National Government from 2016 to 2017, was the fifth and most recent. Probably the most notable of New Zealand's Catholic prime ministers was
Michael Joseph Savage, an
Australian-born
trade unionist and
social reformer who instigated numerous progressive policies as leader of the
First Labour Government of the 1930s.
German Empire

Unification into the German Empire in 1871 saw a country with a Protestant majority and large Catholic minority, speaking German or Polish. Anti-Catholicism was common. The powerful German Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (; born ''Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck''; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898) was a German statesman and diplomat who oversaw the unification of Germany and served as ...
a devout Lutheranforged an alliance with secular liberals in 1871–1878 to launch a
Kulturkampf (literally, "culture struggle") especially in Prussia, the largest state in the new German Empire to destroy the political power of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Catholics were numerous in the South (Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg) and west (Rhineland) and fought back. Bismarck intended to end Catholics' loyalty with Rome (
ultramontanism) and subordinate all Germans to the power of his state.
Priests and bishops who resisted the Kulturkampf were arrested or removed from their positions. By the height of anti-Catholic legislation, half of the Prussian bishops were in prison or in exile, a quarter of the parishes had no priest, half the monks and nuns had left Prussia, a third of the monasteries and convents were closed, 1800 parish priests were imprisoned or exiled, and thousands of laymen were imprisoned for helping the priests. There were anti-Polish elements in Greater Poland and Silesia.
[ ] The Catholics refused to comply; they strengthened their Centre Party.
Pius IX died in 1878 and was replaced by more conciliatory
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII (; born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2March 181020July 1903) was head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 until his death in July 1903. He had the fourth-longest reign of any pope, behind those of Peter the Ap ...
who negotiated away most of the anti-Catholic laws beginning in 1880. Bismarck himself broke with the anti-Catholic Liberals and worked with the Catholic Centre Party to fight Socialism. Pope Leo officially declared the end of the Kulturkampf on 23 May 1887.
Nazi Germany
The
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
faced repression in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
(1933–1945).
Hitler despised the Church even though he had been brought up in a Catholic home. The long-term aim of many Nazis was the de-Christianization of Germany and the establishment of a form of
Germanic paganism
Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological dating, chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the Bri ...
which would replace Christianity.
[Sharkey]
Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity
New York Times, 13 January 2002[Bendersky, Joseph W.]
A concise history of Nazi Germany
p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: "Consequently, it was Hitler's long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire." however
Richard J. Evans writes that Hitler believed that in the long run National Socialism and religion would not be able to co-exist, stressing repeatedly that Nazism was a secular ideology, founded on modern science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition". Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks.
Nazi ideology desired the subordination of the Church to the State and could not accept an autonomous establishment, whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. From the beginning, the Catholic Church faced general persecution, regimentation and oppression. Aggressive anti-Church radicals like
Alfred Rosenberg and
Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-Church and
anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.
[Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; pp. 381–382.
] To many Nazis, Catholics were suspected of insufficient patriotism, or even of disloyalty to the Fatherland, and of serving the interests of "sinister alien forces".
Adolf Hitler had some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but towards its teachings he showed nothing but the sharpest hostility, calling them "the systematic cultivation of the human failure": To Hitler,
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
was a religion that was only fit for slaves and he detested its ethics.
Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock (13 December 1914 – 2 February 2004) was a British historian. He is best known for his book ''Hitler: A Study in Tyranny'' (1952), the first comprehensive biography of Adolf Hitler, which influenced m ...
wrote: "Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the
natural law of selection by struggle and the
survival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, th ...
". For political reasons, Hitler was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism, seeing danger in strengthening the Church by persecuting it, but he intended to wage a show-down against it after the war.
Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock (13 December 1914 – 2 February 2004) was a British historian. He is best known for his book ''Hitler: A Study in Tyranny'' (1952), the first comprehensive biography of Adolf Hitler, which influenced m ...
. '' Hitler: A Study in Tyranny''; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p. 219. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda, led the Nazi persecution of the Catholic clergy and wrote that there was "an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".
Hitler's chosen deputy, Martin Bormann, was a rigid guardian of Nazi orthodoxy and saw Christianity and Nazism as "incompatible", as did the official Nazi philosopher,
Alfred Rosenberg, who wrote in ''
Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) that the Catholic Church were among the chief enemies of the Germans.
[Encyclopædia Britannica Online: ''Fascism - Identification with Christianity''; 2013. Web. 14 April 2013] In 1934, the ''
Sanctum Officium'' put Rosenberg's book on the ''
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
The (English: ''Index of Forbidden Books'') was a changing list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index (a former dicastery of the Roman Curia); Catholics were forbidden to print or re ...
'' (forbidden books list of the Church) for scorning and rejecting "all dogmas of the Catholic Church, indeed the very fundamentals of the Christian religion".
The Nazis claimed that they had jurisdiction over all collective and social activities and based on their claim, they infiltrated all collective and social institutions, interfered in all of the activities which they performed, and banned them if they did not become Nazified, including Catholic schools, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate
Political Catholicism, rounding up members of the Catholic aligned
Bavarian People's Party and
Catholic Centre Party, which ceased to exist in early July 1933. Vice Chancellor Papen meanwhile, amid continuing molestation of Catholic clergy and organisations, negotiated a
Reich concordat
The ''Reichskonkordat'' ("Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich") is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later be ...
with the Holy See, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics. Hitler then proceeded to close all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious:
Almost immediately after agreeing the Concordat, the Nazis promulgated their sterilization law, an offensive policy in the eyes of the Catholic Church and moved to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders began to be targeted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or "immorality".
[William L. Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; pp. 234–235.] In Hitler's
Night of the Long Knives purge,
Erich Klausener, the head of
Catholic Action
Catholic Action is a movement of Catholic laity, lay people within the Catholic Church which advocates for increased Catholic influence on society. Catholic Action groups were especially active in the nineteenth century in historically Catholic cou ...
, was assassinated.
[Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; p. 315] Adalbert Probst, national director of the Catholic Youth Sports Association,
Fritz Gerlich, editor of Munich's Catholic weekly and
Edgar Jung, one of the authors of the
Marburg speech, were among the other Catholic opposition figures killed in the purge.
By 1937, the Church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, had become highly disillusioned. In March,
Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI (; born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, ; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939) was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 until his death in February 1939. He was also the first sovereign of the Vatican City State u ...
issued the ''
Mit brennender Sorge
''Mit brennender Sorge'' ( , in English "With deep it. 'burning'anxiety") is an encyclical of Pope Pius XI, issued during the Nazi era on 10 March 1937 (but bearing a date of Passion Sunday, 14 March)."Church and state through the centu ...
'' encyclicalaccusing the Nazis of violations of the Concordat, and of sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church". The Pope noted on the horizon the "threatening storm clouds" of religious wars of extermination over Germany.
The Nazis responded with, an intensification of the
Church Struggle.
There were mass arrests of clergy and Church presses were expropriated. Goebbels renewed the regime's crackdown and propaganda against Catholics. By 1939 all Catholic denominational schools had been disbanded or converted to public facilities. By 1941, all Church press had been banned.
Later Catholic protests included the 22 March 1942 pastoral letter by the German bishops on "The Struggle against Christianity and the Church". About 30 per cent of Catholic priests were disciplined by police during the Nazi era. In effort to counter the strength and influence of spiritual resistance, the security services monitored Catholic clergy very closelyinstructing that agents monitor every diocese, that the bishops' reports to the Vatican should be obtained and that bishops' activities be discovered and reported. Priests were frequently denounced, arrested, or sent to concentration campsmany to the dedicated
clergy barracks at Dachau. Of a total of 2,720 clergy imprisoned at Dachau, some 2,579 (or 95%) were Catholic.
[Paul Berben; ''Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945''; Norfolk Press; London; 1975; ; pp. 276–277] Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where the Nazis set about systematically dismantling the Churcharresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen were murdered.
Netherlands
The independence of the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
from
Spanish rule led to the formation of a majority Protestant country in which the dominant form of Protestantism was
Calvinism
Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Christian, Presbyteri ...
. In
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
, Catholic priests were driven out of the city
and following the Dutch takeover, all Catholic churches were converted into Protestant churches.
Amsterdam's relationship with the Catholic Church was not normalized until the 20th century.
Nordic countries
Norway
After the
dissolution of Denmark-Norway in 1814, the new
Norwegian Constitution of 1814, did not grant
religious freedom
Freedom of religion or religious liberty, also known as freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice ...
, as it stated that both
Jews
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
and
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
were denied entrance to the
Kingdom of Norway. It also stated that attendance in a
Lutheran
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...
church was compulsory, effectively banning Catholics. The ban on Catholicism was lifted in
1842, and the ban on Jews was lifted in
1851. At first, there were multiple restrictions on the practice of Catholicism by Norwegians and only foreign citizens were freely allowed to practice it. The first post-reformation parish was founded in
1843
Events January–March
* January 3 – The '' Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms'' (海國圖志, ''Hǎiguó Túzhì'') compiled by Wei Yuan and others, the first significant Chinese work on the West, is published in China.
* J ...
, Catholics were only allowed to celebrate Mass in this one parish. In
1845 most of the restrictions on the practice of non-Lutheran Christianity were lifted, and Catholics were now allowed to freely practice their religion, but
Monasticism
Monasticism (; ), also called monachism or monkhood, is a religion, religious way of life in which one renounces world (theology), worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual activities. Monastic life plays an important role in many Chr ...
and the Jesuits were not allowed in the country until
1897 and
1956
Events
January
* January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan after 57 years.
* January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, E ...
respectively.
Swedish Empire
During the period of great power in
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
, conversions to Catholicism were punished with fines or imprisonment and in exceptional cases, death. Sweden during the
Thirty Years War saw itself as the protector of Protestantism in all of Europe against the pope. The
Linköping Bloodbath of 20 March 1600 saw several prominent Catholic nobles beheaded by order of King
Charles IX of Sweden. The executions were partially motivated by the Polish invasion of Sweden and a threat of a potential Catholic takeover under Polish king
Sigismund III Vasa
Sigismund III Vasa (, ; 20 June 1566 – 30 April 1632
N.S.) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1587 to 1632 and, as Sigismund, King of Sweden from 1592 to 1599. He was the first Polish sovereign from the House of Vasa. Re ...
, who planned to reconvert Sweden back to Catholicism. The
Battle of Stångebro prevented Sigismund from conquering and reconverting Sweden. Catholic nobles were put in a majority of leading positions by Sigismund In the Swedish government without the approval of the Swedish people or parliament. The conspiracy provoked new laws preventing Catholics from holding leading government positions in the Swedish government. Due to the Austrian emperor winning a lot of great victories before Sweden joined. The war and Swedish successes cemented Protestantism's continued survival in the
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
and the following anti-Catholicism ingrained in the religion.
was known as the "Lion from the North". He did prevent the pillaging of Catholic villages of Swedish troops by proclaiming Protestant moral superiority in 1631, while Catholic armies were plundering Saxony. He did not wear any armour during the
Battle of Rain against the Catholics and proclaimed he was divinely chosen by God to lead the Protestants to glory, and so felt he needed no protection in battle.
Russian Orthodox populations had the right to practice their faith since their incorporation in 1617 after the
Ingrian War and never faced similar persecution. Even after Eastern Orthodoxy was legalized, there remained an extreme anti-Catholic sentiment in Sweden which was widely supported by German nobility and German Protestants in Swedish territories.
Only in 1781 did Catholics have the right to worship once again in Sweden, the latest of all major religions except
Judaism
Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...
that was legalized in the same era, even though Judaism had already been in practice tolerated since
Charles XII of Sweden brought Muslim and Jewish advisors with him from the Ottoman Empire. While Protestant Swedes could not join any other religious organization until 1873, still, in 1849, Catholic converts were punished with imprisonment. Conversion to Catholicism was punished with fines or imprisonment even after the reform. Catholics could not become a minister of the Swedish government or work as teachers or nurses in Sweden until 1951.
United States
John Higham described anti-Catholicism as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in
American history
The history of the present-day United States began in roughly 15,000 BC with the arrival of Peopling of the Americas, the first people in the Americas. In the late 15th century, European colonization of the Americas, European colonization beg ...
."
* Jenkins, Philip. ''
The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice'' (Oxford University Press, New ed. 2004). British anti-Catholicism was exported to the United States. Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society. The first, which was derived from the heritage of the
Protestant Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...
and the
religious wars of the sixteenth century, consisted of the "Anti-Christ" and the "Whore of Babylon" variety and it dominated Anti-Catholic thought until the late seventeenth century. The second was a more secular variety which focused on the supposed intrigue of the Catholics and accused them of plotting to extend
medieval despotism worldwide.
Historian
Arthur Schlesinger Sr. has called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people".
Historian Joseph G. Mannard says that wars reduced anti-Catholicism: "enough Catholics supported the War for Independence to erase many old myths about the inherently treasonable nature of Catholicism.... During the Civil War the heavy enlistments of Irish and Germans into the Union Army helped to dispel notions of immigrant and Catholic disloyalty."
[
]
Colonial era
American anti-Catholicism has its origins in the Protestant Reformation which generated anti-Catholic propaganda for various political and dynastic reasons. Because the Protestant Reformation justified itself as an effort to correct what it perceived were the errors and the excesses of the Catholic Church, it formed strong positions against the Catholic bishops and the Papacy
The pope is the bishop of Rome and the Head of the Church#Catholic Church, visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the po ...
in particular. These positions were brought to New England by English colonists who were predominantly Puritans
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...
. They opposed not only the Catholic Church but also the Church of England which, due to its perpetuation of some Catholic doctrines and practices, was deemed insufficiently "reformed". Furthermore, English and Scottish identity to a large extent was based on opposition to Catholicism. "To be English was to be anti-Catholic," writes Robert Curran.
Because many of the British colonists, such as the Puritans
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...
and Congregationalists, were fleeing religious persecution by the Church of England, much of early American religious culture exhibited the more extreme anti-Catholic bias of these Protestant denominations. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis wrote that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia". Colonial charters and laws often contained specific proscriptions against Catholics. For example, the second Massachusetts charter of October 7, 1691, decreed "that forever hereafter there shall be liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians, except Papists, inhabiting, or which shall inhabit or be resident within, such Province or Territory". Historians have only identified one Catholic who lived in colonial Boston Ann Glover. She was hanged as a witch in 1688, four years before the much more famous witchcraft trials in nearby Salem.
Monsignor Ellis noted that a common hatred of the Catholic Church could unite Anglican
Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
clerics and Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...
ministers despite their differences and conflicts. One of the Intolerable Acts passed by the British Parliament that helped fuel the American Revolution
The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
was the Quebec Act of 1774, which granted freedom of worship to Roman Catholics in Canada.
New nation
The patriot reliance on Catholic France for military, financial and diplomatic aid led to a sharp drop in anti-Catholic rhetoric. Indeed, the king replaced the pope as the demon patriots had to fight against. Anti-Catholicism remained strong among loyalists, some of whom went to Canada after the war while most remained in the new nation. By the 1780s, Catholics were extended legal toleration in all of the New England states that previously had been so hostile. "In the midst of war and crisis, New Englanders gave up not only their allegiance to Britain but one of their most dearly held prejudices."
George Washington
George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...
was a vigorous promoter of tolerance for all religious denominations as commander of the army (1775–1783) where he suppressed anti-Catholic celebrations in the Army and appealed to French Catholics in Canada to join the American Revolution; a few hundred of them did. Likewise he guaranteed a high degree of freedom of religion as president (1789–1797), when he often attended services of different denominations. The military alliance with Catholic France in 1778 changed attitudes radically in Boston. Local leaders enthusiastically welcomed French naval and military officers, realizing the alliance was critical to winning independence. The Catholic chaplain of the French army reported in 1781 that he was continually receiving "new civilities" from the best families in Boston; he also noted that "the people in general retain their own prejudices." By 1790, about 500 Catholics in Boston formed the first Catholic Church there.
Fear of the pope agitated some of America's Founding Fathers. For example, in 1788, John Jay
John Jay (, 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American statesman, diplomat, signatory of the Treaty of Paris (1783), Treaty of Paris, and a Founding Father of the United States. He served from 1789 to 1795 as the first chief justice of the United ...
urged the New York Legislature to prohibit Catholics from holding office. The legislature refused, but did pass a law designed to reach the same goal by requiring all office-holders to renounce foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil". Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...
, looking at the Catholic Church in France, wrote, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government", and "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
1840s–1850s
Anti-Catholic fears reached a peak in the nineteenth century when the Protestant population became alarmed by the influx of Catholic immigrants. Irish and German Catholic immigrants in particular were pouring into the US at rapid speeds in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Some settled in urban centers in the East, but a large portion also began moving to the unsettled western land along the Mississippi River Valley. The land provided the resources that they would need to survive in their new home, but it also created tensions with the Protestant Americans looking to inhabit the land themselves. Theories about the Roman Catholic Church's intentions were abundant since it appeared that the church was impeding on the Protestants' right to the western lands.
Some Protestant ministers preached the belief that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon which is described in the Book of Revelation. The resulting "nativist" movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, most notably the Philadelphia Nativist Riot of 1844. Historian David Montgomery argues that the Irish Catholic Democrats in Philadelphia had successfully appealed to the upper-class Whig leadership. The Whigs wanted to split the Democratic coalition, so they approved Bishop Kendrick's request that Catholic children be allowed to use their own Bible. That approval outraged the evangelical Protestant leadership, which rallied its support in Philadelphia and nationwide. Montgomery states:
:The school controversy, however, had united 94 leading clergymen of the city in a common pledge to strengthen Protestant education and "awaken the attention of the community to the dangers which... threaten these United States from the assaults of Romanism." The American Tract Society took up the battle cry and launched a national crusade to save the nation from the "spiritual despotism" of Rome. The whole Protestant edifice of churches, Bible societies, temperance societies, and missionary agencies was thus interposed against Catholic electoral maneuvers ... at the very moment when those maneuvers were enjoying some success.
The nativist movement found expression in a national political movement called the "American" or Know-Nothing Party of 1854–1856. It had considerable success in local and state elections in 1854–55 by emphasizing nativism and warning against Catholics and immigrants. It nominated former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in the 1856 election. However, Fillmore was not anti-Catholic or nativist; his campaign concentrated almost entirely on national unity. Historian Tyler Anbinder says, "The American party had dropped nativism from its agenda." Fillmore won 22% of the national popular vote.
During this period of time, discussions of public versus religious education were growing in both urban and rural settings. Protestants and Catholics alike understood the importance of educating the youth; however, finding common ground on how to approach education became a challenge with differing values mixing together.
While the push for moderated school systems increased in the mid-nineteenth century, government oversight was common, especially in less-populated, rural regions. As such, the local church and community tended to create educational systems centered on their particular faith, and education was largely seen as a group effort. In urban areas, public education was more closely monitored and at the forefront of politics since cities saw the largest increases in immigrant population which brought in new children to educate.
Many Catholic immigrants coming into the United States found it was more comforting to stay tightly-knit with those of the same nationality, leading churches to create their own educational facilities for the children within a particular community. Every immigrant group coming from a Catholic country had unique saints to venerate and views on how to educate their children, so ethnic groups tended to stick together in order to preserve their traditions. Classes were taught in the immigrants' native language in an attempt to keep their culture alive as well, but many American Protestants viewed this negatively, as though the immigrants were unwilling to adjust to their new lives in an English-speaking nation.
The push for public education came from a hope that America would become a more prosperous place if it were made up of well-rounded, well-educated individuals. And because immigrants made up a large portion of the population, common education had to be established. Many Catholic communities wanted to remain separate, though, since public education tended to have Biblical influence from the Protestant Christian King James Bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by ...
. Major disputes erupted because the Catholic church did not want their youth to be educated under Protestant ideologies, as most public schools read Bible hymns and utilized McGuffey Readers, which featured Biblical passages teaching moral lessons to students from a Protestant point of view.
The disagreements between faiths led leaders of public education systems, typically Protestant in faith, to advocate for disintegration between schools. To the leaders, the Catholic community was not worthwhile and had too many differences from Protestantism; therefore, they assumed, combining educational systems would only bring about further complications. Additionally, combining systems meant leaders on either side would have to give up their authority in dictating the ideas and lessons pushed to the forefront in public education.
Anti-Catholicism among American Jews further intensified in the 1850s during the international controversy over the Edgardo Mortara case, when a baptized Jewish boy in the Papal States
The Papal States ( ; ; ), officially the State of the Church, were a conglomeration of territories on the Italian peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope from 756 to 1870. They were among the major states of Italy from the 8th c ...
was removed from his family and refused to return to them.
1860s–1890s
The First Vatican Council convened in 1869 and caused another rift to form between Catholics and Protestants. The Council passed the doctrine of papal infallibility
Papal infallibility is a Dogma in the Catholic Church, dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Saint Peter, Peter, the Pope when he speaks is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine "in ...
, claiming that the pope, like Peter in ancient Christianity, retained an ability to make definitive decisions about official doctrinal disputes over faith and morals. Protestants viewed this as an attempt for the Roman Catholic Church and the pope, who was Pope Pius IX
Pope Pius IX (; born Giovanni Maria Battista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro Mastai-Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of nearly 32 years is the longest verified of any pope in hist ...
at the time, to establish greater power over their Catholic followers.
This distrust of Rome continued to infiltrate the educational facilities in the United States as well, leading to the fight for eliminating government-funded Catholic schooling. Many cities made attempts to integrate school systems, though there were varying degrees of success. One of the successful attempts was allowing Catholic teachers to find work within public schools, teaching children of countless denominations. But there were instances of limiting Catholics in public education as seen in Poughkeepsie, NY, in 1873 when a law was passed that forbade Catholic garments from being worn within public education facilities—it was not repealed until 1898.
In the Orange Riots in New York City in 1871 and 1872, Irish Catholics violently attacked Irish Protestants, who carried orange banners.
In 1875, another attempt at limiting Catholic funding came about in the form of the Blaine Amendment. It was brought into the courts after James G. Blaine, who was searching for a campaign platform for presidency, created an argument for defunding parochial, or denominational, schools. Though it was not explicitly stated to be against Catholicism, Catholic versus public education had been a heated topic for several years by this point. Many newspapers argued that Blaine wanted to build his following from those who held anti-Catholic beliefs. Although the amendment was vetoed, it made lasting impacts on the United States. After 1875, many states passed constitutional provisions, called " Blaine Amendments", forbidding tax money be used to fund parochial schools. In 2002, the United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...
partially vitiated these amendments, when they ruled that vouchers were constitutional if tax dollars followed a child to a school even if the school were religious.
A favorite rhetorical device in the 1870s was using the code words for Catholicism: "superstition, ambition and ignorance". President Ulysses Grant in a major speech to veterans in October 1875 warned that America again faced an enemy: religious schools. Grant saw another civil war in the "near future": it would not be between North and South, but will be between "patriotism and intelligence on the one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." According to historian Charles W. Calhoun, "at various points in his life, Grant had bristled privately at what he considered religious communicants' thralldom to a domineering clergy, but he did not specifically mention Catholicism in his speech. Still, Catholic journals decried the president's seeming exploitation of religious bigotry." In his December 1875 Annual Message to Congress, Grant urged taxation on "vast amounts of untaxed church property" which Professor John McGreevey says was "a transparently anti-Catholic measure since only the Catholic Church owned vast amounts of propertyin schools, orphanages, and charitable institutions". Grant told Congress such legislation would protect American citizens from tyranny "whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft."
20th and 21st centuries
Anti-Catholicism played a major role in the defeat of Al Smith
Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was the 42nd governor of New York, serving from 1919 to 1920 and again from 1923 to 1928. He was the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party's presidential nominee in the 1 ...
, the Democratic nominee for president in 1928. Smith did very well in Catholic precincts, but he did poorly in the South relative to previous Democratic presidential candidates, as well as among the Lutherans of the North. His candidacy was also hampered by his close ties to the notorious Tammany Hall political machine
In the politics of representative democracies, a political machine is a party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives (such as money or political jobs) and that is characterized by a high degree of leadership c ...
in New York City and his strong opposition to prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...
. His cause was uphill in any case, because he faced a popular Republican leadership in a year of peace and unprecedented prosperity.
The passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, a culmination of a half-century of anti-liquor agitation, also fueled anti-Catholic sentiment. Prohibition enjoyed strong support among dry pietistic Protestants, and equally strong opposition by wet Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans. The drys focused their distrust on the Catholics who showed little popular support for the enforcement of prohibition laws, and when the Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
began in 1929, there was increasing sentiment that the government needed the tax revenue which the repeal of Prohibition would bring.
Over 10 million Protestant soldiers who served in World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
came into close contact with Catholic soldiers; they got along well and, after the war, they played a central role in spreading a greater level of ethnic and religious toleration for Catholics among other white Americans
White Americans (sometimes also called Caucasian Americans) are Americans who identify as white people. In a more official sense, the United States Census Bureau, which collects demographic data on Americans, defines "white" as " person hav ...
. Although anti-Catholic sentiment declined in the U.S. in the 1960s, particularly after John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. president, traces of it persist in both the media and popular culture. In March 2000, the Catholic League criticized ''Slate'' magazine and journalist Jack Shafer for a piece the League described as taking "delight in justifying anti-Catholicism." Anti-Catholic hate crimes against persons and property have also continued to occur. The summer of 2020 saw a wave of anti-Catholic acts which ranged from the vandalization of churches and cathedrals; to the destruction and often the decapitation of statues, particularly statues of St Junipero Serra, Mary, and Jesus
Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...
; in states including Illinois and Florida. Many of these acts are tied to other political movements, the most notable of them is the QAnon movement, but other far right groups have also espoused anti-Catholic sentiment. One popular conspiracy theory is based on the belief that the three stars on the DC flag stand for London, the Vatican and Washington. Another far-right conspiracy claims the pope was arrested for sexual abuse.
In primarily Catholic countries
Anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is opposition to clergy, religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historically, anti-clericalism in Christian traditions has been opposed to the influence of Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secul ...
is a historical movement that opposes religious (generally Catholic) institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen. It suggests a more active and partisan role than mere laïcité
(; 'secularism') is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as the separation of civil society and religious society. It discourages religious involvement in governmen ...
. The goal of anticlericalism is sometimes to reduce religion to a purely private belief-system with no public profile or influence. However, many times it has included outright suppression of all aspects of faith.
Anticlericalism has at times been violent, leading to murders and the desecration, destruction and seizure of Church property. Anticlericalism in one form or another has existed throughout most of Christian history, and it is considered to be one of the major popular forces underlying the 16th century reformation. Some of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
, continually attacked the Catholic Church, both its leadership and its priests, claiming that many of its clergy were morally corrupt. These assaults in part led to the suppression of the Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, and played a major part in the wholesale attacks on the very existence of the Church during the French Revolution in the Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror (French: ''La Terreur'', literally "The Terror") was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the French First Republic, First Republic, a series of massacres and Capital punishment in France, nu ...
and the program of dechristianization. Similar attacks on the Church occurred in Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
and Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...
since their 1910 revolutions and in Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
during the twentieth century.
Austria
Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans (disambiguation), Emperor of the Romans (; ) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period (; ), was the ruler and h ...
Joseph II (emperor 1765–1790) opposed what he called "contemplative" religious institutionsreclusive Catholic institutions that he perceived as doing nothing positive for the community. Although Joseph II was himself a Catholic, he also believed in firm state control of ecclesiastical matters outside of the strictly religious sphere and decreed that Austrian bishops could not communicate directly with the Roman Curia. His policies are included in what is called Josephinism, that promoted the subjection of the Catholic Church in the Habsburg lands to service for the state.
The Secularization Decree issued on 12 January 1782 banned several monastic orders not involved in teaching or healing and liquidated 140 monasteries. The banned monastic orders: Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, Camaldolese, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin
The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (; postnominal abbr. OFMCap) is a religious order of Franciscan friars within the Catholic Church, one of three " First Orders" that reformed from the Franciscan Friars Minor Observant (OFMObs, now OFM), the ...
, Carmelites, Carthusians, Poor Clares, Order of Saint Benedict
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...
, Cistercians
The Cistercians (), officially the Order of Cistercians (, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, as well as the contri ...
, Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers (, abbreviated OP), commonly known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic Church, Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right that was founded in France by a Castilians, Castilian priest named Saint Dominic, Dominic de Gu ...
(Order of Preachers), Franciscans
The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor being the largest conte ...
, Pauline Fathers and Premonstratensians
The Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré (), also known as the Premonstratensians, the Norbertines and, in United Kingdom, Britain and Ireland, as the White Canons (from the colour of their religious habit, habit), is a religious order of cano ...
, and their wealth was taken over by the Religious Fund.
Austria-Hungary
Georg Ritter von Schönerer (1842–1921) was an Austrian landowner and politician of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...
. He was a major opponent of political Catholicism and the founder of the movement '' Away from Rome!'', aimed the conversion of all the Catholic German-speaking population of Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
to Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...
, or, in some cases, to the Old Catholic Churches.
Brazil
Brazil has the largest number of Catholics in the world,[IBGE – Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics). ''Religion in Brazil – 2000 Census''](_blank)
Retrieved 2009-01-06. and as a result, it has not experienced any large anti-Catholic movements.
During the 19th century, the Religious Issue was the name given to the crisis when Freemasons in the Brazilian government imprisoned two Catholic bishops for enforcing the Church's prohibition against Freemasonry
Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...
.
Even during times in which the Church was experiencing intense conservatism
Conservatism is a Philosophy of culture, cultural, Social philosophy, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, Convention (norm), customs, and Value (ethics and social science ...
, such as the era of the Brazilian military dictatorship, anti-Catholicism was not advocated by the left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...
movements (instead, Liberation theology gained force). However, with the growing number of Protestants (especially Neo-Pentecostals) in the country, anti-Catholicism has gained strength. A pivotal moment during the rise of anti-Catholicism was the kicking of the saint episode in 1995. However, owing to the protests of the Catholic majority, the perpetrator was transferred to South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
for the duration of the controversy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, drug dealer
A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestio ...
s took advantage of the pandemic to unite five slums
A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily in ...
in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...
imposing evangelical Protestantism on the area and attacking Catholics (and also members of Umbanda
Umbanda () is a religion that emerged in Brazil during the 1920s. Deriving largely from Kardecist spiritism, Spiritism, it also combines elements from African diasporic religions, Afro-Brazilian traditions like Candomblé as well as Roman Catho ...
).
Colombia
Anti-Catholic and anti-clerical sentiments, some of which were spurred by an anti-clerical conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
* ...
which was circulating in Colombia during the mid-twentieth century, led to the persecution and killing of Catholics, most specifically, the persecution and killing of members of the Catholic clergy, during the events which are known as La Violencia.
Cuba
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
, under the rule of the atheist Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
, succeeded in reducing the ability of the Catholic Church to work by deporting one archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, by discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party. The subsequent flight of 300,000 Cubans from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.[Chadwick, ''A History of Christianity'' (1995), p. 266]
France
During the French Revolution (1789–1795), the clergy and the laity were persecuted and Church property was confiscated and destroyed by the new government as part of a process of '' Dechristianization'', the aims of which were the destruction of Catholic practices and the destruction of the very faith itself, culminating in the imposition of the atheistic Cult of Reason followed by the imposition of the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being.[Tallet, Fran]
Religion, Society and Politics in France Since 1789
pp. 1–2, 1991 Continuum International Publishing The persecution led Catholics who lived in the west of France to wage a counterrevolution, the War in the Vendée, and when the state was victorious, it killed tens of thousands of Catholics. A few historians have called the killings a genocide
Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
. However, most historians believe that the killings constituted a brutal crackdown against political enemies rather than a genocide. The French invasions of Italy (1796–1799) included an assault on Rome and the exile of Pope Pius VI in 1798.
Relations improved in 1802 when Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
came to terms with the Pope in the Concordat of 1801
The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between the First French Republic and the Holy See, signed by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII on 15 July 1801 in Paris. It remained in effect until 1905, except in Alsace–Lorraine, ...
. It allowed the Church to operate but did not give back the lands; it proved satisfactory for a century. By 1815 the Papacy supported the growing alliance against Napoleon, and was re-instated as the State Church during the conservative Bourbon Restoration of 1815–1830. The brief French Revolution of 1848 again opposed the Church, but the Second French Empire
The Second French Empire, officially the French Empire, was the government of France from 1852 to 1870. It was established on 2 December 1852 by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, president of France under the French Second Republic, who proclaimed hi ...
(1851–1871) gave it full support. The history of 1789–1871 had established two campsthe left against the Church and the right supporting itthat largely continued until the Vatican II
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent Catholic ecumenical councils, ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilic ...
process in 1962–1965.
The Government of France's Third Republic (1871–1940) was dominated by anti-clericalism, the desire to secularise the State and cultural life, based on an obsession with being faithful to the most extreme currents of the French Revolution. This was the position of the radicals and socialists. in 1902 Émile Combes
Émile Justin Louis Combes (; 6 September 183525 May 1921) was a French politician and freemason who led the Bloc des gauches, Lefts Bloc (French: ''Bloc des gauches'') cabinet from June 1902 to January 1905.
Career
Émile Combes was born on 6 ...
became Minister of the Interior, and the main energy of the government was devoted to furthering an anti-clerical agenda.["Emile Combes who boasted of taking office for the sole purpose of destroying the religious orders. He closed thousands of what were not then called 'faith schools']
Bigots united
in the Guardian, 9 October 2005 The parties of the Left, Socialists and Radicals, united upon this question in the ''Bloc republicain'', supported Combes in his application of the law of 1901 on the religious associations, and voted the new bill on the congregations (1904). By 1904, through his efforts, nearly 10,000 religious schools had been closed and thousands of priests and nuns left France rather than be persecuted. Under his guidance parliament passed the 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State, which reversed the Napoleonic arrangement of 1801.
In the Affaire Des Fiches, in France in 1904–1905, it was discovered that the militantly anticlerical War Minister under Combes, General Louis André, had imposed religious discrimination upon the French armed forces
The French Armed Forces (, ) are the military forces of France. They consist of four military branches – the Army, the Navy, the Air and Space Force, and the National Gendarmerie. The National Guard serves as the French Armed Forces' milita ...
by using the Masonic Grand Orient de France's huge card index documenting which military officers were practicing Catholics and attended Mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
and then blocking them from all future promotions. Exposure of the policy in the National Assembly by the opposition almost caused the government to fall; instead Emile Combes retired.
Italy
In the Napoleonic era, anti-clericalism was a powerful political force. From 1860 through 1870, the new Italian government, under the House of Savoy
The House of Savoy (, ) is a royal house (formally a dynasty) of Franco-Italian origin that was established in 1003 in the historical region of Savoy, which was originally part of the Kingdom of Burgundy and now lies mostly within southeastern F ...
, outlawed all religious orders, both male and female, including the Franciscan
The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...
s, the Dominicans and the Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
, closed down their monasteries and confiscated their property, and imprisoned or banished bishops who opposed this (see Kulturkampf). Italy took over Rome in 1870 when it lost its French protection; the Pope declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican. Relations were finally normalized in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty.
Ireland
Following the defeat of the Catholic King James II by William III at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, the Protestant Ascendancy installed by the English Crown through Plantations, sought to consolidate their power and prevent any resurgence of Catholic influence. To achieve this, they enacted a series of laws known as the Penal Laws, designed to systematically oppress Catholics and other non-Anglican religious groups.
The Penal laws imposed a number of civil disabilities among Catholics, such as fines for participating in Catholic Worship, and even Capital Punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...
for priests found to be practicing their ministry within Great Britain and Ireland. Catholics were also prohibited from being landed, Voting, Teaching, Holding any Public Office and bringing religious paraphernalia from Rome into Britain
Mexico
Following the Reform War, President Benito Juárez issued a decree nationalizing Church properties, separating Church and State, and suppressing religious orders.
In the wake of the Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution () was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It saw the destruction of the Federal Army, its ...
, the Mexican Constitution of 1917
The current Constitution of Mexico, formally the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States (), was drafted in Santiago de Querétaro, in the Querétaro, State of Querétaro, Mexico, by a Constituent assembly, constituent convention d ...
contained further anti-clerical provisions. Article 3 called for secular education in the schools and prohibited the Church from engaging in primary education; Article 5 outlawed monastic orders; Article 24 forbade public worship outside the confines of churches; and Article 27 placed restrictions on the right of religious organizations to hold property. Article 130 deprived clergy members of political rights.
Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles's strict enforcement of previous anti-clerical legislation denying priests' rights, enacted as the Calles Law, prompted the Mexican Episcopate to suspend all Catholic worship in Mexico from August 1, 1926, and sparked the bloody Cristero War of 1926–1929 in which some 50,000 peasants took up arms against the government. Their slogan was "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King!).
The effects of the war on the Church were profound. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.[Van Hove, Bria]
Blood-Drenched Altars
Faith & Reason 1994 Where there were 4,500 priests serving the people before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion, assassination or not obtaining licenses.[Scheina, Robert L]
''Latin America's Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791–1899''
p. 33 (2003
Brassey's) It appears that ten states were left without any priests. Other sources indicate that the persecution was such that, by 1935, 17 states had no registered priests.
Some of the Catholic casualties of this struggle are known as the Saints of the Cristero War. Events relating to this were famously portrayed in the novel '' The Power and the Glory'' by Graham Greene.
Nicaragua
Poland
''For the situation in Russian Poland, see Anticatholicism in Russian Empire''
Catholicism in Poland, the religion of the vast majority of the population, was severely persecuted during World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, following the Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
invasion of the country and its subsequent annexation into Germany. Over 3 million Catholics of Polish descent were murdered during the Invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...
, including 3 bishops, 52 priests, 26 monks, 3 seminarians, 8 nuns and 9 lay people, later beatified in 1999 by Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005.
In his you ...
as the 108 Martyrs of World War II.
The Roman Catholic Church was even more violently suppressed in Reichsgau Wartheland and the General Government
The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
.[John S. Conway, "The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945", Regent College Publishing, 1997] Churches were closed, and clergy were deported, imprisoned, or killed, among them was Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole of German descent. Between 1939 and 1945, 2,935 members of the Polish clergy (18%) were killed in concentration camps. In the city of Chełmno, for example, 48% of the Catholic clergy were killed.
Catholicism continued to be persecuted under the Communist regime from the 1950s. Contemporary Stalinist ideology claimed that the Church and religion in general were about to disintegrate. Initially, Archbishop Wyszyński entered into an agreement with the Communist authorities, which was signed on 14 February 1950 by the Polish episcopate and the government. The Agreement regulated the matters of the Church in Poland. However, in May of that year, the Sejm
The Sejm (), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (), is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral parliament of Poland.
The Sejm has been the highest governing body of the Third Polish Republic since the Polish People' ...
breached the Agreement by passing a law for the confiscation of Church property.
On 12 January 1953, Wyszyński was elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pius XII as another wave of persecution began in Poland. When the bishops voiced their opposition to state interference in ecclesiastical appointments, mass trials and the internment of priests beganthe cardinal being one of its victims. On 25 September 1953 he was imprisoned at Grudziądz
Grudziądz (, ) is a city in northern Poland, with 92,552 inhabitants (2021). Located on the Vistula River, it lies within the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship and is the fourth-largest city in its province.
Grudziądz is one of the oldest citie ...
, and later placed under house arrest in monasteries in Prudnik near Opole and in Komańcza Monastery in the Bieszczady Mountains. He was released on 26 October 1956.
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005.
In his you ...
, who was born in Poland as Karol Wojtyla, often cited the persecution of Polish Catholics in his stance against Communism.
Spain
Anti-clericalism in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
resulted in the killing of almost 7,000 clergy, the destruction of hundreds of churches and the persecution of lay people in Spain's Red Terror
The Red Terror () was a campaign of political repression and Mass killing, executions in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police ...
. Hundreds of Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War have been beatified and hundreds more in October 2007.
In mixed Catholic-Protestant countries
Switzerland
The Jesuits (Societas Jesu) were banned from all activities in either clerical or pedagogical functions by Article 51 of the Swiss constitution in 1848. The reason for the ban was the perceived threat to the stability of the state resulting from Jesuit advocacy of traditional Catholicism; it followed the Roman Catholic cantons forming an unconstitutional ''separate alliance'' leading to civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
. In June 1973, 55% of Swiss voters approved removing the ban on the Jesuits (as well as Article 52 which banned monasteries and convents from Switzerland). (See '' Kulturkampf'' and '' Religion in Switzerland'')
In primarily Orthodox countries
Byzantine Empire
In the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Orthodox Church
The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, and also called the Greek Orthodox Church or simply the Orthodox Church, is List of Christian denominations by number of members, one of the three major doctrinal and ...
and the Catholic Church broke their full communion
Full communion is a communion or relationship of full agreement among different Christian denominations or Christian individuals that share certain essential principles of Christian theology. Views vary among denominations on exactly what constit ...
with each other because of Ecclesiastical differences, Theological, and Liturgical disputes.
In April 1182, the Eastern Orthodox
Eastern Orthodoxy, otherwise known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity or Byzantine Christianity, is one of the three main Branches of Christianity, branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholic Church, Catholicism and Protestantism ...
population of the Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...
committed a large-scale massacre against the Catholic population of Constantinople
Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
, this massacre is known as the Massacre of the Latins
The Massacre of the Latins was a large-scale massacre of Italian-descent Catholics (called " Latins") in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, by the Eastern Orthodox population of the city in April 1182..
The Catholics of Const ...
and it further worsened relations and increased enmity between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Russian Empire
During Russian rule, Catholics, primarily Poles
Pole or poles may refer to:
People
*Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland
* Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name
* Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist
...
and Lithuanians
Lithuanians () are a Balts, Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another two million make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the Lithuanian Americans, United Sta ...
, suffered great persecution not only because of their ethnic-national background, but also for religious reasons. Especially after the uprisings of 1831 and 1863, and within the process of Russification (understanding that there is a strong link between religion and nationality), the tsarist authorities were anxious to promote the conversion of these peoples to the official faith, intervening in public education in those regions (an Orthodox religious education was compulsory) and censoring the actions of the Catholic Church. In particular, attention was focused on the public actions of the Church, such as masses or funerals, because they could serve as the focus of protests against the occupation. Many priests were imprisoned or deported because of their activities in defense of their religion and ethnicity. In the late nineteenth century, however, there was a progressive relaxation of the control of Catholic institutions by the Russian authorities. Additionally, all the Eastern Catholic population was forced to convert to the Orthodox faith, with refusal often being met with violence and even murder, like the martyrs of Pratulin.
Former Yugoslavia
During World War II in Yugoslavia
World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was Invasion of Yugoslavia, invaded and swiftly conquered by Axis powers, Axis forces and partitioned among Nazi Germany, Germany, Fascist Italy (1922–1943), It ...
, the Chetniks
The Chetniks,, ; formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland; and informally colloquially the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist m ...
killed an estimated 18,000–32,000 Croats
The Croats (; , ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other neighboring countries in Central Europe, Central and Southeastern Europe who share a common Croatian Cultural heritage, ancest ...
, who were mostly Roman Catholic. The terror tactics against the Croats were, to at least an extent, a reaction to the genocide which the Ustaše committed against the Serbs. Along with mass murder, the Ustashe conducted religious persecution of Serbs that included a policy of forced conversion from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism, often with the participation of local Catholic priests. However, the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia, where they preceded significant Ustashe operations. Croats (and Muslims) who lived in areas that were intended to be parts of Greater Serbia were supposed to be cleansed of non-Serbs, in accordance with Mihailović's directive of 20 December 1941. About 300 villages and small towns were destroyed, along with a large number of mosque
A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard.
Originally, mosques were si ...
s and Catholic churches. Fifty-two Catholic priests were killed by Chetniks throughout the war. A number of Catholic nuns were also raped and killed, including the killing of several nuns from Goražde in December 1941.
During the war in Croatia, the ICTY determined that ethnic Croats were persecuted on political, racial and religious grounds, as part of a general campaign of killings and forced-removals of Croat civilians. This included the deliberate destruction of religious buildings and monuments. Approximately 450 Catholic churches were destroyed or severely damaged, with another 250 suffering lesser damages. In addition, approximately 151 rectories, 31 monasteries, and 57 cemeteries were destroyed or severely damaged. While another 269 religious buildings were destroyed during the Bosnian War
The Bosnian War ( / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an international armed conflict that took place in Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Following several earlier violent incid ...
.
Ukraine
The Khmelnytsky Uprising in the 17th century has a symbolic meaning in the history of Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
's relationship with Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
. It ended the Polish Catholic ''szlachta
The ''szlachta'' (; ; ) were the nobility, noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Depending on the definition, they were either a warrior "caste" or a social ...
''′s domination over the Ukrainian Orthodox population. The insurgency was accompanied by mass atrocities committed by Cossacks
The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic languages, East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borde ...
against prisoners of war and the civilian population, including Latin Rite Catholics and Ruthenian Uniate clergy.
Attacks on Catholic Poles
Pole or poles may refer to:
People
*Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland
* Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name
* Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist
...
during the massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–1945 were marked with extreme brutality. The UPA's actions resulted in up to 100,000 Polish deaths. The Roman Catholic Church suffered huge losses in UPA attacks. According to Norman Davies, "Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners."
An OUN order from early 1944 stated:
In the separatist region which is known as the Donetsk People's Republic, the government has declared that the Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...
of the Moscow Patriarchate is the state religion in 2014, and Protestant churches have been occupied by paramilitaries. Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination that is an outgrowth of the Bible Student movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the nineteenth century. The denomination is nontrinitarian, millenarian, and restorationist. Russell co-fou ...
have lost their property, and their Kingdom Halls have been occupied by rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
, Greek Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Protestant clergy have been kidnapped by groups such as the Russian Orthodox Army, and they have also been accused of opposing Russian Orthodox values. Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...
says that the bodies of several members of the Church of the Transfiguration were found in a mass grave in 2014.
Non-Christian nations
Bangladesh
On 3 June 2001, nine people were killed by a bomb explosion at a Roman Catholic church in the Gopalganj District.
Burkina Faso
On May 12, 2019, six Catholics including a priest were killed by gunmen who rode on motorcycles and stormed a church in Dablo during a Sunday morning mass. A day later, on May 13, 2019, four people were killed and a statue of the Virgin Mary was destroyed by armed men in an attack on Catholic parishioners during a religious procession in the remote village of Zimtenga.
China
The Daoguang Emperor modified an existing law, making the spread of Catholicism punishable by death.
During the Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, was an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, and anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious F ...
, Catholic missionaries and their families were murdered by Boxer rebels. During the 1905 Tibetan Rebellion, Tibetan rebels murdered Catholics and Tibetan converts.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, all religions including Catholicism only operate under state control. However, many Catholics do not accept State control of the Church and as a result, they worship clandestinely.[U.S Department of State]
International Religious Freedom Report 2010: China
17 Nov 2010. There has been some rapprochement between the Chinese government and the Vatican.
Chinese Christians have reportedly been persecuted in both official and unsanctioned churches. In 2018, the Associated Press reported that China's paramount leader
Paramount leader () is an informal term for the most important Supreme leader, political figure in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). The paramount leader typically controls the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Liberatio ...
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...
"is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982", which has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith".
Japanese soldiers murdered the French Canadian Jesuit Catholic priests Armand Lalonde, Alphonse Dubé and Prosper Bernard in Feng County, Jiangsu on 18 March 1943.
Japanese soldiers murdered Catholic priests and monks in January 1939 in Hejian and September 1941 in Yuntaishan. Several figures of Catholic Saints and convents and churches were destroyed by Japanese in Hong Kong.
East Timor
The Japanese murdered Christians and forced girls into prostitution in Timor and Sumba, desecrating sacred vessels and vestments in churches and using the churches as brothels. Javanese girls were brought as prostitutes by the Japanese to Flores and Buru.
Japan
On 5 February 1597 a group of twenty-six Catholics were killed on the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
During the Tokugawa Shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868.
The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...
, Japanese Catholics were suppressed, leading to an armed rebellion during the 1630s. After the rebellion was crushed, Catholicism was further suppressed and many Japanese Catholics went underground. Catholicism was not openly restored to Japan until the 1850s.
Pakistan
North Korea
South Korea
Catholic priests and nuns have been arrested and harassed for protesting against the construction of the Jeju Island Naval Base.
Sri Lanka
Government actions
In Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
, A Buddhist
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
-influenced government took over 600 parish schools in 1960 without compensation and secularized them. Attempts were made by future governments to restore some autonomy.
Anti-Catholic violence
Since 2000, in a context of rising violence against religious minorities, i.e. Christians, Muslims and Hindus, multiple attacks on Catholic churches occurred. For instance, in 2009, a mob of 1,000 smashed the interior of a church in the town of Crooswatta, assaulting parishioners with clubs, swords and stones, forcing several of them to be treated in hospitals. In 2013, vandals smashed a statue of the Virgin Mary as well as a tabernacle, and they also tried to burn the Eucharist at a church in Angulana, near Colombo
Colombo, ( ; , ; , ), is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. The Colombo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 within the municipal limits. It is the ...
.
The term "anti-Catholic Catholic" has come to be applied to Catholics who are perceived to view the Catholic Church with animosity. Traditionalist or conservative Catholics frequently use it as a descriptive term for modernist or liberal Catholics, especially those modernist or liberal Catholics who seek to reform Church doctrine, make secularist critiques of the Catholic Church, or place secular principles above Church teachings. Those who take issue with the Catholic theology of sexuality are especially prone to be given this label.
Suppression of the Jesuits
Prime Minister Pombal of Portugal was aggressively hostile to the Jesuit order because it reported to an Italian powerthe Popeand it also tried to operate independently rather than operate under the control of the government. In Portugal as well as in much of Catholic Europe, he waged a full-scale war against the Jesuits. The Jesuit order was suppressed in the Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire was a colonial empire that existed between 1415 and 1999. In conjunction with the Spanish Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It achieved a global scale, controlling vast portions of the Americas, Africa ...
(1759), France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
(1764), the Two Sicilies, Malta
Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...
, Parma
Parma (; ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmesan, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,986 inhabitants as of 2025, ...
, the Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy (political entity), Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered ...
(1767), and Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
and Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
(1782). The Pope himself suppressed the order everywhere in 1773, but it survived in Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
and Prussia
Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...
. The suppression of the Jesuits was a major blow to Catholic education across Europe, with nearly 1000 secondary schools and seminaries were shut down. Their lands, buildings, and endowments were confiscated; their teachers were scattered. Although Jesuit education had become old fashioned in Poland and other areas, it was the main educational support network for Catholic intellectuals, senior clergy, and prominent families. Governments unsuccessfully attempted to replace all of those schools, but there were far too few non-clerical teachers who were suitable.
The Jesuit order was restored by the pope in 1814 and it flourished in terms of rebuilding schools and educational institutions but it never regained its enormous political power. The suppression of the Jesuits has been described as "an unmitigated disaster for Catholicism." The political weakness of the once-powerful institution was on public display for more ridicule and bullying
Bullying is the use of force, coercion, Suffering, hurtful teasing, comments, or threats, in order to abuse, aggression, aggressively wikt:domination, dominate, or intimidate one or more others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. On ...
. The Church lost its best educational system, its best missionary system, and its most innovative thinkers. Intellectually, it would take two centuries for the Church to fully recover.
In popular culture
Anti-Catholic stereotypes are a long-standing feature of English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian d ...
, popular fiction, and pornography
Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...
. Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name of the genre is derived from the Renaissance era use of the word "gothic", as a pejorative to mean me ...
is particularly rich in this regard. Lustful priests, cruel abbesses, immured nuns, and sadistic inquisitors appear in such works as '' The Italian'' by Ann Radcliffe, '' The Monk'' by Matthew Lewis, '' Melmoth the Wanderer'' by Charles Maturin
Charles Robert Maturin, also known as C. R. Maturin (25 September 1780 – 30 October 1824), was an Irish Protestant clergyman (ordained in the Church of Ireland) and a writer of Gothic fiction, Gothic plays and novels.Chris Morgan, "Maturin, C ...
and " The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely re ...
. Additionally, priests, clergymen, and even regular Catholic laity are oftentimes portrayed as pedophiles in media, due to the sex abuse scandals within the church in recent times.
See also
* Anti-Christian sentiment
*Anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is opposition to clergy, religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historically, anti-clericalism in Christian traditions has been opposed to the influence of Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secul ...
* Antipapalism
* Black Propaganda against Portugal and Spain
* Catholic–Eastern Orthodox relations
* Catholic–Protestant relations
*History of the Catholic Church
The history of the Catholic Church is the formation, events, and historical development of the Catholic Church through time.
According to the Sacred tradition, tradition of the Catholic Church, it started from the day of Pentecost at the uppe ...
*History of Christianity
The history of Christianity began with the life of Jesus, an itinerant Jewish preacher and teacher, who was Crucifixion of Jesus, crucified in Jerusalem . His followers proclaimed that he was the Incarnation (Christianity), incarnation of Go ...
* History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
* History of Protestantism
* Hindu terrorism
Hindu terrorism, or sometimes Hindutva terror, or metonymically saffron terror, refer to terrorist acts carried out, on the basis of motivations in broad association with Hindu nationalism or Hindutva.
The phenomenon became a topic of conte ...
** Hindutva
** Violence against Christians in India
** Violence against Muslims in independent India
* Persecution of Christians
* Protestant Revolution (Maryland)
* Sectarian violence among Christians
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
United States, Canada and Mexico
* Anbinder, Tyler. ''Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s'' (1992)
* Anderson, Kevin P. ''Not Quite Us: Anti-Catholic Thought in English Canada Since 1900'' (McGill-Queen's Studies, 2019).
* Bennett, David H. ''The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History'' University of North Carolina Press, 1988
* Billington, Ray Allen. ''The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism'' (1938
online
* Blanshard, Paul. ''American Freedom and Catholic Power'' (Beacon Press, 1949); famous attack on Catholicism
online
* Brown, Thomas M. "The Image of the Beast: Anti-Papal Rhetoric in Colonial America", in Richard O. Curry and Thomas M. Brown, eds., ''Conspiracy: The Fear of Subversion in American History'' (1972), 1–20.
* Cogliano, Francis D. ''No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England'' (Greenwood Press, 1995)
* Corrigan, John, and Lynn S. Neal, eds. "Anti-Catholicism." In ''Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History'' (2nd ed, U of North Carolina Press, 2010), pp 49–72; other targets also get chapters
online
* Cruz, Joel Morales. ''The Mexican Reformation: Catholic Pluralism, Enlightenment Religion, and the Iglesia de Jesus Movement in Benito Juarez's Mexico (1859–72)'' (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011).
*
*
*Farrelly, Maura Jane. ''Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620–1860'' (Cambridge Essential Histories, 2017)
* Greeley, Andrew M. ''An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America'' (1977).
* Henry, David. "Senator John F. Kennedy Encounters the Religious Question: I Am Not the Catholic Candidate for President." in ''Contemporary American Public Discourse'' Ed. H. R. Ryan. (Waveland Press, Inc., 1992) pp. 177–193.
* Higham; John. ''Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925'' (1955)
*
* Hostetler; Michael J. "Gov. Al Smith Confronts the Catholic Question: The Rhetorical Legacy of the 1928 Campaign," ''Communication Quarterly'' (1998) 46#1 pp 12+.
* Jensen, Richard. ''The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896'' (1971)
* Keating, Karl. ''Catholicism and FundamentalismThe Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians"'' (Ignatius Press, 1988).
*
* Menendez, Albert J. ''The Religious Factor in the 1960 Presidential election: an analysis of the Kennedy victory over anti-Catholic prejudice'' (McFarland, 2014)
online
* Miller, James R. "Anti-catholic thought in Victorian Canada." ''Canadian Historical Review'' 66.4 (1985): 474–494.
* Moore; Leonard J. ''Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1991)
* Paddison, Joshua. "Anti-Catholicism and Race in Post-Civil War San Francisco." ''Pacific Historical Review'' 78.4 (2009): 505–544.
online
* Pagliarini, Marie Anne. "The pure American woman and the wicked Catholic priest: An analysis of anti-Catholic literature in antebellum America." ''Religion and American Culture'' 9.1 (1999): 97–128.
* Pinheiro, John C. "'Extending the light and blessings of our purer faith': Anti-Catholic sentiment among American soldiers in the US-Mexican war." ''Journal of popular culture'' 35.2 (2001): 129+.
* Ryan, James Emmett. "The House of Harper: Melville's Anti-Catholic Publisher." ''Book History'' 23.1 (2020): 76–98
online
*
* Thiemann, Ronald F. ''Religion in Public Life'' Georgetown University Press, 1996.
* Verhoeven, Timothy. ''Transatlantic Anti-Catholicism: France and the United States in the Nineteenth Century'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
* Watt, James T. "Anti-Catholic nativism in Canada: The Protestant Protective Association." ''Canadian Historical Review'' 48.1 (1967): 45–58.
*
Europe
*
* Bruce, Steve. ''No Pope of Rome: Anti-Catholicism in Modern Scotland'' (Edinburgh, 1985).
*
*
* Gheeraert-Graffeuille, Claire, and Geraldine Vaughan, eds. ''Anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland, 1600–2000: Practices, Representations and Ideas'' (Springer Nature, 2020)
links to chapters
* Gross, Michael B. ''The war against Catholicism: liberalism and the anti-Catholic imagination in nineteenth-century Germany'' (U of Michigan Press, 2004).
* Joskowicz, Ari. ''The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France'' (Stanford University Press; 2013) 376 pages; how Jewish intellectuals defined themselves as modern against the anti-modern positions of the Catholic Church
* Latourette, Kenneth Scott. ''Christianity in a Revolutionary Age'' (5 vol 1969), covers 1790s to 1960; comprehensive global history
* Lehner, Ulrich and Michael Printy, eds. ''A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe'' (2010)
* Mourret, Fernand. ''History Of The Catholic Church'' (8 vol, 1931) comprehensive history to 1878. country by country
online free
by French Catholic priest; see vols. 6-7-8.
* Palko, Olena. "Between Moscow, Warsaw and the Holy See: The Case of Father Andrzej Fedukowicz Amidst the Early Soviet Anti-Catholic Campaign." ''Revolutionary Russia'' 35.2 (2022): 225–246.
*
*
* Verhoeven, Timothy. ''Transatlantic Anti-Catholicism: France and the United States in the Nineteenth Century'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
*
*
* Wolffe, John, ed., ''Protestant-Catholic Conflict from the Reformation to the Twenty-first Century'' (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013)
Table of contents
* Wolffe, John. "A Comparative Historical Categorisation of Anti-Catholicism." ''Journal of Religious History'' 39.2 (2015): 182–202
online free
* Wolffe, John. "Anti-catholicism and the British empire, 1815–1914." in ''Empires of religion'' (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2008) pp. 43–63.
Asia and Pacific
* An, Hengshi. "The Impact of the Finalization of the China-Holy See Deal in 2018 to the Catholic Community in China." ''6th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research'' (ICHSSR 2020). (Atlantis Press, 2020)
online
* Baker, Don, and Franklin Rausch. ''Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in Chosŏn Korea'' (University of Hawaii Press, 2017
online
* Fleming, Peter, and Ismael Zuloaga. "The Catholic Church in China: A New Chapter." ''Religion in Communist Lands'' 14.2 (1986): 124–133.
* Fowler, Colin. "Anti-Catholic polemic at the origins of Australia's first Catholic newspaper." ''Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society'' 37.2 (2016): 147–160
online
* McCarthy, Scott Denis. "Popery, Politics, and Prejudice: Anti-Catholic Sentiment during Australia’s Great War Conscription Debates." ''Australian Historical Studies'' (2022): 1–21.
* O’Connor, P. S. "Sectarian Conflict in New Zealand, 1911-1920." ''Political Science'' 19.1 (1967): 3–16.
* Reinders, Eric. "The Unbowed Foreigner: Postural Identities of Buddhists and Christians in China." ''Journal of Ritual Studies'' (2005): 55–65.
* Strate, Shane. "An uncivil state of affairs: Fascism and anti-Catholicism in Thailand, 1940–1944." ''Journal of Southeast Asian Studies'' 42.1 (2011): 59–87
online
* Xuliang, Sun. "Espionage, Adultery, and Witchcraft: Rumor and Imagination Transplant in the Anti-Catholic Persecution of Late Ming China." ''SAGE Open'' 11.4 (2021): 21582440211058724
open
External links
Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe
{{Authority control
Anti-Catholic organizations
Anti-Christian sentiment
Anti-clericalism
Criticism of the Catholic Church
Persecution of Catholics
Relations between Christian denominations