2023-10-22 20:13:53
Par Albert Kornél
Published 1 minute ago, Updated 1 minute ago
Faithful await the arrival of Pope Francis in St. Elizabeth’s Church in Budapest during his visit on April 29. VINCENZO PINTO/AFP
ANALYSIS – The number of Catholics has decreased by almost half over the last twenty years, according to the 2022 census.
Budapest
There is one thing that religious leaders forgot to say during their opening speeches at the Demographic Summit which brought together the conservative galaxy close to Viktor Orban, in mid-September in Budapest: the pews of their churches are more and emptier. There is a gulf between the official public discourse, which presents Hungary as a bastion of Christianity in a decadent West, and the reality, crudely highlighted by the census, the results of which were released at the end of September.
The number of those who declared themselves Catholic increased from 5.6 million in 2001 to 3.9 million in 2011 and then 2.9 million in 2022 (for 9.7 million inhabitants), according to the Bureau of Statistics. In two decades, the number of people declaring that they are Catholic has therefore decreased by almost half. The Reformed, the second religion in Hungary, follow the same trend, increasing from 1.6 million in 2001 to 0.9 million in 2022. In total, Hungarians declaring that they belong to a…
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