Catholic Church in England and Wales

The Catholic Church in England and Wales (Ecclesia Catholica in Anglia et Cambria; Yr Eglwys Gatholig yng Nghymru a Lloegr) is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See. Its origins date from the 6th century, when Pope Gregory I through the Roman monk and Benedictine missionary, Augustine, later Augustine of Canterbury, intensified the evangelization of the Kingdom of Kent linking it to the Holy See in 597 AD. This unbroken communion with the Holy See lasted until King Henry VIII ended it in 1534. Communion with Rome was restored by Queen Mary I in 1555 following the Second Statute of Repeal and eventually finally broken by Elizabeth I's 1559 Religious Settlement, which made "no significant concessions to Catholic opinion represented by the church hierarchy and much of the nobility." For two hundred and fifty years the government forced members of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church known as recusants to go underground and seek academic training in Catholic Europe, where exiled English clergy set up schools and seminaries for the sons of English recusant families. The government also placed legislative restrictions on Catholics, some continuing into the 20th century, while the ban on Catholic worship lasted until the Catholic Relief Act 1791. The ban did not, however, affect foreign embassies in London, although serving priests could be hounded. During this time, the English Catholic community was divided between the upper classes, aristocracy and gentry, and the working class. At the 2001 United Kingdom census, there were 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, some 8% of the population. One hundred years earlier, in 1901, they represented only 4.8% of the population. In 1981, 8.7% of the population of England and Wales were Catholic. In 2009, post the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, when thousands of Central Europeans (mainly heavily Catholic Poles, Lithuanians, Slovakians and Slovenians) came to England, an Ipsos Morioka poll found that 9.6%, or 5.

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Related concepts (17)

Popish Plot

The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the executions of at least 22 men and precipitated the Exclusion Bill Crisis. During this tumultuous period, Oates weaved an intricate web of accusations, fueling public fears and paranoia.

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