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Irish Catholics (Irish: Caitlicigh na hÉireann) are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland [12] [13] whose members are both Catholic and Irish. They have a large diaspora , which includes over 31 million American citizens , [ 14 ] plus over 7 million Irish Australians , of whom around 67% adhere to Catholicism.
The Catholic Church in Ireland, or Irish Catholic Church, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See. With 3.5 million members (in the Republic of Ireland), it is the largest Christian church in Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland's 2022 census, 69% of the population identified as Roman Catholic. [2]
In 1613, forty new boroughs were created, all of them dominated by Protestants. The consequence of this was the reduction of the Catholic majority in the Irish parliament to a minority. By the end of the seventeenth century all Catholics, representing some 85% of Ireland's population then, were banned from the Irish parliament.
The Catholic Church in Ireland serves Catholics in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland under the spiritual leadership of Pope Francis and the Conference of Irish Bishops. In the Republic of Ireland, 87.4% of the citizens were baptised Catholic as infants while the figure for Northern Ireland is 43.8%.
As with other predominantly Catholic European states, the Irish state underwent a period of legal secularisation in the late twentieth century. In 1972, the article of the Constitution naming specific religious groups, including the Catholic Church, was deleted by the fifth amendment of the constitution in a referendum.
The first and most pressing reason was an alliance signed in 1649 between the Irish Confederate Catholics and Charles II, proclaimed King of Ireland in January 1649. This allowed for Royalist troops to be sent to Ireland and put the Irish Confederate Catholic troops under the command of Royalist officers led by James Butler, Earl of Ormonde.
The Pontifical Irish College, the Roman Catholic seminary for the training and education of priests in Rome, was founded in 1628. [3] Irish Catholics were the main promoters of Catholic emancipation that was achieved in 1829 in what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
During the 1950s the Catholic Integrist group Maria Duce, led by Irish Catholic priest Denis Fahey, launched a campaign to amend the Article 44 of the Constitution of Ireland. [3] Fahey argued that this was insufficient and that the Constitution should recognise the Catholic Church as being divinely ordained and separate from 'man-made ...