In 2023, Islam was the religion followed by the largest group of foreigners living in Italy, with almost 30 percent of the share. Christians Orthodox represented 29 percent of the total immigrant population, followed by Catholics with 17 percent. About ten percent of the foreign population in Italy did not have any religious affiliation.

According to data from 2020, more than a half of foreign inhabitants in Italy were Christians (52 percent). Muslims represented 33 percent of all foreign residents in Italy, while almost five percent were either atheist or agnostic.

In 2023, around 1.52 million Muslims lived in Italy. Almost 30 percent of them were represented by Moroccan citizens, with 417,000 people. Islam constitutes the first most common religion of foreigners nationwide. The second-largest religion among immigrants living in Italy is the Christian Orthodox one, considering the large Romanian community residing in the country.

Between 2010 and 2019, the number of religious marriages in Italy experienced a decrease. On the other hand, civil marriages increased, reaching in 2019 approximately 96.8 thousand.

The region registering the largest amount of marriages was Lombardy, in the North of Italy, where a total of 26 thousand marriages was recorded in 2019.

ethnic groups in Italy. name, image, country of origin, continent of origin, Language, Religion, religion, population

People with elementary education or no education made up the most numerous group of people attending religious services at least once a week in Italy. As of 2020, about 4.7 million people belonged to this group, which equals to around 30 percent of the total population with a low education. On the contrary, people with university education represented the smallest group of people going to church at least once a week.

In Italy, more than 50 percent of all the prisoners in 2016 were Catholics. Moreover, 29.1 percent of inmates declared themselves as non-believers or did not declare their religious affiliation. Only 0.06 percent of the prisoners in Italy belong to Jehovah's witnesses.

The present study is a part of the project HIWED (Historical Indicators of the Western European Democracies; Project leader: Wolfgang Zapf and Peter Flora), funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung. The HIWED main product is a comprehensive data manual on political, social and economic developments in Western Europe for the period between 1815 and 1975.

Peter Flora’s study on the development of religious affiliation (´religious homogeneity or heterogeneity´) in selected Western European countries in a historical perspective is based on statistics from population censuses.The data tables are from the second section (´Cultural Heterogeneity´) of the first issue of the above-mentioned data manual. The United Kingdom has not taken into account in the analysis of the development perspective; there were only one census (1851) with information on the number of meetings in churches and the number of church-goers to a certain date. No systematic information is also available about the Protestant minorities in France, Belgium and Italy.

Data Tables in histat:

Religious affiliation, differentiation of the data tables by countries: A – Tabellen: Deutschland (Germany); B – Tabellen: Skandinavische Länder (Nordic States); C – Tabellen: Niederlande (The Netherlands); D – Tabellen: Schweiz (Switzerland); E – Tabellen: Irland (Italy); F – Tabellen: Österreich (Austria).

People with upper secondary education represented the largest group of people never attending religious services in Italy. As of 2020, about 6.1 million people with an upper secondary education did not attend any church in the last 12 months. This corresponds to around 32 percent of the Italian population with a high school diploma.

This study includes data on regional level for nine Western European countries: election returns, occupation categories, religion, population.

Every year, the number of Italian believers attending religious services becomes lower and lower. In 2024, the number of people attending places of worship at least once per week dropped below ten million individuals for the first time since at least 2001, seven million worshipers less than in 2013. In 2020, the most prayerful were the citizens aged over 75 years, whereas the lowest number of individuals attending religious services at least once a week was recorded in the age group between 18 and 19 years. Religious affiliation of Italians Although the dominant religion in Italy is Catholicism, Italian citizens also belong to other religious minorities. In 2020, the largest share of individuals not affiliated to the Roman Catholic Church were Muslims, followed by Jehovah’s Witnesses and Protestants. Reasons to leave religion When asked about the reason they left the religion, 64 percent of the Italian respondents stated that they disagreed with their religion’s position on social issues. Another 60 percent of the interviewees were unhappy about scandals involving religious institutions, whereas six percent left the religion because they married someone outside the faith.

This statistic shows the results of a survey about the compatibility of vaccines with religious beliefs according to physicians as well as to the general public in Italy in 2018. As of survey period, 80 percent of GPs and 80.8 percent of the general population declared vaccines were compatible with their religious beliefs.

Sikhism is a religion that originated on the Indian subcontinent during the fifteenth century. Sikhs follow the teachings of 'gurus', who descend from the first guru Guru Naruk who established the faith. Followers of Sikhism are monotheists, believing in only one god, and other core beliefs include the need to meditate, the importance of community and communal living, and the need to serve humanity selflessly (or 'seva'). Sikhism and the British Empire In total, there are around 26 million Sikhs worldwide, and over 24 million of these live in India. Outside of India, the largest Sikh populations are mostly found in former territories of the British Empire - the UK and Canada both have Sikh populations of over half a million people. Migration from India to other parts of the British Empire was high in the 19th century, due to the labor demands of relatively newer colonies, as well as those where slavery had been abolished. These countries also remain popular destinations for Sikh migrants today, as many are highly trained and English-speaking. Other regions with significant Sikh populations Italy also has a sizeable Sikh population, as many migrated there after serving there in the British Army during WWI, and they are now heavily represented in Italy's dairy industry. The Sikh population of Saudi Arabia is also reflective of the fact that the largest Indian diaspora in the world can now be found in the Middle East - this is due to the labor demands of the fossil fuel industries and their associated secondary industries, although a large share of Indians in this part of the world are there on a temporary basis.

This statistic shows the estimated number of Muslims living in different European countries as of 2016. Approximately 5.72 million Muslims were estimated to live in France, the most of any country listed. Germany and the United Kingdom also have large muslim populations with 4.95 million and 4.13 million respectively.

This statistic displays the projected Muslim population proportions in selected European countries in 2050, by scenario. In 2010 the proportion of Muslims in the population of Germany was 4.1 percent, compared with 6.3 percent in the UK and 7.5 percent in France. Depending on the different migration scenarios estimated here, Germany's share of Muslims in the population could rise up to 19.7 percent of it's population by 2050, higher than both the UK and France, with projected Muslim populations of 17.2 and 18 percent respectively.

The world's Jewish population has had a complex and tumultuous history over the past millennia, regularly dealing with persecution, pogroms, and even genocide. The legacy of expulsion and persecution of Jews, including bans on land ownership, meant that Jewish communities disproportionately lived in urban areas, working as artisans or traders, and often lived in their own settlements separate to the rest of the urban population. This separation contributed to the impression that events such as pandemics, famines, or economic shocks did not affect Jews as much as other populations, and such factors came to form the basis of the mistrust and stereotypes of wealth (characterized as greed) that have made up anti-Semitic rhetoric for centuries. Development since the Middle Ages The concentration of Jewish populations across the world has shifted across different centuries. In the Middle Ages, the largest Jewish populations were found in Palestine and the wider Levant region, with other sizeable populations in present-day France, Italy, and Spain. Later, however, the Jewish disapora became increasingly concentrated in Eastern Europe after waves of pogroms in the west saw Jewish communities move eastward. Poland in particular was often considered a refuge for Jews from the late-Middle Ages until the 18th century, when it was then partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and persecution increased. Push factors such as major pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 19th century and growing oppression in the west during the interwar period then saw many Jews migrate to the United States in search of opportunity.

Although over 90 percent of Italians formally belong to the Catholic Church, the results of a recent survey reveal a different relation between Italian citizens and the Church. According to a survey conducted in 2020, only 25 percent of respondents defined their relationship to the Church as traditional. On the contrary, over 60 percent of interviewees declared either not to be practicing or not to be Catholic.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the Catholic Church, centered in Rome, became the largest unifying authority in Southern and Western Europe. However, it was not the Italian peninsula that has the highest number of churches, monasteries, and abbeys during the Middle Ages, but France.

The monastic movement of St. Benedict, formed in the 6th century, eventually consolidated its power in France and gained widespread influence over the region. By the 12th century, the Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Burgundy, controlled over 1,000 other abbeys (even as far as Scotland), and was considered the leading center of Christian monasticism. In many ways, the Church was considered a more powerful authority than monarchies in the Middle Ages, and the hierarchical nature of the Church saw cardinals and bishops elevated to positions of significant power. In addition to being places of worship, abbeys and monasteries also became trading and communal centers for local populations before the era of urbanization.