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Catholic Church in Austria
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| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| icon | Emblem of the Papacy SE.svg |
| icon_width | 25px |
| name | Catholic Church in Austria |
| native_name | |
| native_name_lang | de |
| image | Wien_-_Stephansdom_(3).JPG |
| imagewidth | 200px |
| caption | St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna. |
| type | National polity |
| main_classification | Catholic |
| orientation | Latin |
| polity | Episcopal |
| governance | Episcopal Conference of Austria |
| leader_title | Pope |
| leader_name | |
| leader_title1 | Chairman |
| leader_name1 | Franz Lackner |
| leader_title2 | Primas Germaniae |
| leader_name2 | Franz Lackner |
| leader_title3 | Apostolic Nuncio |
| leader_name3 | Pedro López Quintana |
| area | Austria |
| language | German, Latin |
| headquarters | Vienna, Austria |
| members | 4,557,471 (49.6 %) (2024) |
| website | Episcopal Conference of Austria |
The Catholic Church in Austria is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Pope in Rome. The Church's governing body in Austria is the Austrian Conference of Catholic Bishops, made up of the hierarchy of the two archbishops (Vienna and Salzburg), the bishops and the abbot of territorial abbey of Wettingen-Mehrerau. Nevertheless, each bishop is independent in his own diocese, answerable only to the Pope. The current president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. The Austrian church is the largest Christian Confession of Austria, with 4.56 million members (49.6 % of the total Austrian population) in 2024.
For more than 50 years, however, the proportion of Catholics has decreased, primarily due to secularization and migration (from 89% in 1961 to under 50% in 2024). The number of Sunday churchgoers in 2023 was around 4.1 percent (as percentage of the total Austrian population that is 378,797 churchgoers out of a total population of 9,158,750).
Although Austria has no primate, the archbishop of Salzburg is titled Primus Germaniae (Primate of Germany).
Organisation
| year | population | Catholics | % | Protestants | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | 6,933,905 | 6,170,084 | 89.0% | 429,493 | 6.2% |
| 1961 | 7,073,807 | 6,295,075 | 89.0% | 438,663 | 6.2% |
| 1971 | 7,491,526 | 6,548,316 | 87.4% | 447,070 | 6,0% |
| 1981 | 7,555,338 | 6,372,645 | 84.3% | 423,162 | 5,6% |
| 1991 | 7,795,786 | 6,081,454 | 78.0% | 388,709 | 5.0% |
| 2001 | 8,032,926 | 5,915,421 | 73.6% | 376,150 | 4.7% |
| 2011 | 8,408,121 | 5,403,722 | 64.3% | 319,752 | 3.8% |
| 2021 | 8,979,894 | 4,827,683 | 53.8% | 270,585 | 3.0% |
| 2022 | 9,104,772 | 4,733,085 | 52.0% | 263,627 | 2.9% |
| 2023 | 9,158,750 | 4,638,842 | 50.6% | 255,738 | 2.8% |
| 2024 | 9,197,213 | 4,557,471 | 49.6% | 248,113 | 2.7% |
Ecclesiastical structure
- Archdiocese of Vienna with the following suffragan dioceses:
- Diocese of Eisenstadt
- Diocese of Linz
- Diocese of St. Pölten
- Archdiocese of Salzburg with the following suffragans
- Diocese of Graz-Seckau
- Diocese of Gurk
- Diocese of Feldkirch
- Diocese of Innsbruck
- Territorial Abbey of Wettingen-Mehrerau (immediately subject to the Holy See)
- Military Ordinariate of Austria (immediately subject to the Holy See)
List of Catholic organisations in Austria
- Caritas Austria
- Katholische Jungschar
- Katholische Jugend
Statistics
71% of Austrian Catholics support same-sex marriage and 26% oppose it.
Criticism
Call to Disobedience organization
Main article: Call to Disobedience
The organization Call to Disobedience (Aufruf zum Ungehorsam in German) is an Austrian movement mainly composed of dissident Catholic priests which started in 2006. The movement claims that it is "positively received" by the majority of Austrian Catholic priests and favors ordination of women, married and non-celibate priesthood, allowing Holy Communion to remarried divorcees and non-Catholics which disagrees with teachings of the Catholic Magisterium. The group also believes the way the Church is governed needs reform.
Notable people
- Mozart
- Emerich Coreth
- Leopold III, Margrave of Austria
- Heinrich Maier, important resistance fighter against Nazi terror
- Gregor Mendel
- Zacharias Traber
- Franz Wasner
References
References
- [https://www.statistik.at/statistiken/bevoelkerung-und-soziales/bevoelkerung/bevoelkerungsstand/bevoelkerung-zu-jahres-/-quartalsanfang Austrian Population], retrieved 17 September 2025
- [http://www.katholisch.at/statistik Catholic Church, Statistical Data 2003 - 2024 in German], retrieved 17 September 2025
- [http://evang.at/kirche/zahlen-fakten/ Lutheran Church, Statistical Data 2024 in German], retrieved 17 September 2025
- [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/02/how-catholics-around-the-world-see-same-sex-marriage-homosexuality/ How Catholics around the world see same-sex marriage, homosexuality] ''[[Pew Research Center]]''
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20131213190511/http://www.catholictippingpoint.org/helmut The Catholic Tipping Point], old page version at archive.org
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
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