Religion in Poland

Religion in Poland is rapidly declining, although historically it had been one of the most Catholic countries in the world.^[2]

St. Florian's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Warsaw. A large majority of ethnic Poles are adherents of the Catholic branch of Christianity.

According to a 2018 report by the Pew Research Center, the nation was the most rapidly secularizing of over a hundred countries measured, "as measured by the disparity between the religiosity of young people and their elders."^[3] The rate of decline has been described as "devastating"^[4] the former social prestige and political influence that the Catholic Church in Poland once enjoyed.^[5] Most Poles adhere to Roman Catholicism. 71.3% of the population identified themselves as such in the 2021 census, down from 87.6% in 2011.^[4] According to church statistics, approximately 28% of Catholics attend mass weekly.^[6] The church's reputation has declined significantly in response to sexual abuse scandals, its support of a near-total abortion ban in Poland, and close ties to the Law and Justice party, often considered its de facto political proxy in the country.^[2][3][4]

The current extent of this numerical dominance results largely from The Holocaust of Jews living in Poland carried out by Nazi Germany and the World War II casualties among Polish religious minorities.^{[7][8][9][10]} Its members regard it as a repository of Polish heritage and culture.^[11] The rest of the population consists mainly of Eastern Orthodox (Polish Orthodox Church – approximately 507,196 believers),^[12] various Protestant churches (the largest of which is the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, with 61,217 members)^[12] and Jehovah's Witnesses (116,935).^[12] There are about 55,000 Greek Catholics in Poland.^[12] Other religions practiced in Poland, by less than 0.1% of the population, include Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.^[13]

In the 2021 census, the most common religion was Roman Catholicism, whose followers comprised 72.4% of the population, followed by the Eastern Orthodoxy with 0.4%, Jehovah's Witnesses with 0.3%, and various Protestant denominations comprising 0.4% of the Polish population and 0.1% for Greek Catholic Churches. According to Statistics Poland in 2018, 93.5% of the population was affiliated with a religion; 3.1% did not belong to any religion. Roman Catholicism comprised 91.9% of the population, with Eastern Orthodoxy at 0.9% (rising from 0.4% in 2011, caused in part by recent immigration from Ukraine).^[14]

In 2015, 61.1% of the population gave religion high to very high importance whilst 13.8% regarded religion as of little or no importance. The percentage of believers is much higher in the eastern parts of Poland.^[15]