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There are more Catholics in Ireland than ever before, but the church is losing market share due to a surge in other religions and non-believers, the Independent news site reported.
The report, quoting a new census on religion, said the Catholic Church now has 3.86 million members in Ireland, but a growing population – including a surge in people of other faiths and none – means its share of the population is actually at its lowest point.
A new Census 2011 report on Religion, Ethnicity and Irish Travellers said that in percentage terms, the proportion of people who are Catholic has fallen to 84.2 percent from a peak of 94.9 percent 50 years ago.
The report also revealed significant growth in the non-Catholic population and a sharp rise in the number of Muslims, which has more than doubled in a decade to over 49,000, accounting for one percent of the population.
The Church of Ireland has seen a six percent increase since 2006 and now has 129,036 members, the report from the Central Statistics Office shows.
The number of Orthodox Christians has doubled since 2002 to 45,223, while the Apostolic and Pentecostal churches saw a major surge to over 14,000 adherents.
The number of non-religious people living in Ireland has increased by 400 percent over the past 20 years.
Among the Catholic community, 92 percent are Irish while the remaining 8 percent belong to a range of nationalities, the majority of whom are Polish.
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