Demographics and Structure
According to the 2006 Australian National Census, there were 5,126,884 Catholics in Australia. This represented 25.8% of the overall Australian population and was the largest single Christian denomination (being slightly larger than the Anglican and Uniting churches combined).
Until the 1986 census, Australia's most populous Christian church was the Anglican Church of Australia. Since then Catholics have outnumbered Anglicans by an increasing margin. One rationale to explain this relates to changes in Australia's immigration patterns. Prior to the Second World War, the majority of immigrants to Australia had come from the United Kingdom - though most of Australia's Catholic immigrants had come from Ireland. After the war, Australia's immigration program diversified and more than 6.5 million migrants arrived in Australia in the following 60 years, including more than a million Catholics from nations such as Italy, Malta, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Croatia and Hungary.
While Catholicism is now the largest church tradition in Australia and the overall Catholic population continues to grow, active participation in weekly church attendance has been in decline. The National Church Life Survey of weekly attendance, found that between 1996 and 2001 Catholic attendance at weekly services dropped by 13% to 764,800.
In Australia there are seven archdioceses and 32 dioceses, with an estimated 3,000 priests and 9,000 men and women in religious institutes. A diocese usually has a defined territory and comprises the Catholics who live there. This is the case with 28 of the Australian dioceses. There are also five dioceses which cover the whole country: one each for those who belong to the Chaldean, Maronite, Melkite and Ukrainian rites and one for those who are serving in the Australian Defence Forces.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholicism In Australia
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