Catholic Church in the Netherlands
 Catholic Church in the Netherlands |
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| Type | National polity |
| Classification | Catholic |
| Governance | Episcopal |
| Pope | Pope Francis |
| President | Bishop Hans van den Hende |
| Primate | Archbishop Wim Eijk |
| Apostolic Nuncio | Aldo Cavalli |
| Region | Netherlands |
| Language | Dutch, Latin |
| Headquarters | St Catherine's Cathedral, Utrecht |
| Members | 3,882,000 |
| Official website | Episcopal Conference of the Netherlands |
The Catholic Church in the Netherlands (Dutch: Rooms-katholiek kerkgenootschap in Nederland), is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Its primate is the Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, currently Willem Jacobus Eijk since 2008. Currently, Roman Catholicism is the single largest religion of the Netherlands, forming some 11.7% of the Dutch people in 2015, based on indepth interviewing, down from 40% in the 1960s.
Although the number of Catholics in the Netherlands has decreased significantly in recent decades, the Catholic Church remains today the largest religious group in the Netherlands. Once known as a Protestant country, Catholicism surpassed Protestantism after the first world war, and in 2012 the Netherlands was only 10% Dutch Protestant (down from 60% in the early 20th century; defections primarily due to rising unaffiliation that started to occur two decennia earlier than in Dutch Roman Catholicism). There are an estimated 3.882 million Catholics registered (2015) by the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, 22.9% of the population down from more than 40% in 1970's. The Catholic Church in the Netherlands has suffered an official membership loss of 650,000 members between 2003 (4,532,000 pers. / 27.9% overall population) and 2015 (3,882,000 pers. / 22.9% overall population), The number of people registered as Catholic in the Netherlands continues to decrease, roughly by half a percent annually.
North Brabant and Limburg have been historically the most Roman Catholic parts of the Netherlands, and Roman Catholicism and some of its traditions now form a cultural identity rather than a religious identity for people there. The vast majority of the Roman Catholic population is now largely irreligious in practice (in line with the rest of the Dutch population). Research among self-identified Roman Catholics in the Netherlands in 2007 showed that only 27% could be regarded as theist; 55% as ietsist, deist, or agnostic; and 17% as atheist. In 2015 only 13% of self-identified Dutch Catholics believe in the existence of heaven, 17% in a personal God and fewer than half believe that Jesus was the Son of God or sent by God.
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