Catholicism in Canada

Catholic Church in Canada
Basilica-Cathedral Notre-Dame de Québec
Classification	Catholic
Orientation	Catholic
Polity	Episcopal
Associations	Canadian Council of Churches
Region	Canada
Origin	1534
Members	38.7% of Canadians (12,728,900 as of 2011) baptized as Catholics

The Catholic Church in Canada is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope. As of 2011^[update], it has the largest number of adherents to a Christian denomination and a religion in Canada, with 38.7% of Canadians (12.73 million) baptized as Catholics. There are 52 dioceses and about 8,000 priests in Canada.

Catholicism arrived in Canada in 1497, when John Cabot landed on Newfoundland, raised the Venetian and Papal banners and claimed the land for his sponsor King Henry VII of England, while recognizing the religious authority of the Roman Catholic Church. A letter of John Day states that Cabot landed on 24 June 1497 and "went ashore with a crucifix and raised banners bearing the arms of the Holy Father". In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the first Catholic colony in Quebec City. In 1611, he established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, which later became a Catholic colony for trade and missionary activity.

In 1620, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore purchased a tract of land in Newfoundland from Sir William Vaughan and established a colony, calling it Avalon, after the legendary spot where Christianity was introduced to Britain. In 1627 Calvert brought two Roman Catholic priests to Avalon. This was the first continuous Roman Catholic ministry in British North America. Despite the severe religious conflicts of the period, Calvert secured the right of Catholics to practice their religion unimpeded in Newfoundland, and embraced the novel principle of religious tolerance, which he wrote into the Charter of Avalon and the later Charter of Maryland. The Colony of Avalon was thus the first North American jurisdiction to practice religious tolerance.