Gorizia and Gradisca - Religion

Religion

The vast majority of the population of the County was of Roman Catholic denomination. Gorizia was one of the most important centers of the Catholic Church in Austria, since it was the seats of the Archbishops of Görz, who were one of the three legal descendants of the Patriarchate of Aquileia (along with the Patriarchate of Venice and the Archdiocese of Udine). Gorizia was thus the center of a Metropolitan bishopric that comprised the Dioceses of Ljubljana, Trieste, Poreč-Pula and Krk. Several important religious figures lived and worked in Gorizia, including cardinal Jakob Missia, bishop Frančišek Borgia Sedej, theologians Anton Mahnič and Josip Srebrnič, and Franciscan monk and philologian Stanislav Škrabec. There were many important Roman Catholic sacral buildings in the area, among them the sancturies of Sveta Gora ("Holy Mountain") and Barbana, and the monastery of Kostanjevica. Most of the County was included into the Archbidiocese of Gorizia, with the exception of the south-western portion of the Kras plateau (around Sežana), which was included in the Diocese of Trieste.

According to the census of 1910, there were around 1,400 members of non-Latin Catholic or non-Catholic denominations in the County, which amounted to only around 0,5% of the overall population. Among them, around 750 belonged to various Protestant denominations (mostly Lutherans), around 340 were of Jewish faith, around 180 Greek Orthodox and around 130 were Greek Catholic.