page_title: Religion in Indonesia
section_title: Roman Catholicism
hierarchical_section_title: Religion in Indonesia / State-recognised religions / Christianity / Roman Catholicism
caption_attribution_description: Bahasa Indonesia: Gereja Katedral Jakarta
context_page_description: Indonesia is officially a republic with a compromise made between the ideas of an Islamic state and a secular state. Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population and the first principle of Indonesia's philosophical foundation, Pancasila requires its citizens to "believe in the one and only God". Consequently, atheists in Indonesia experience official discrimination in the context of registration of births and marriages and the issuance of identity cards. In addition, Aceh officially enforces Sharia law and is notorious for its discriminatory practices towards religious and sexual minorities. There are also pro-Sharia movements in other parts of the country with overwhelming Muslim majorities.
  Several different religions are practised in the country, and their collective influence on the country's political, economic and cultural life is significant. Despite constitutionally guaranteeing freedom of religion, the government recognises only six official religions: Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
context_section_description: Catholicism arrived in the archipelago during the Portuguese arrival with spice-trading over the 14th and 15th century. Many Portuguese had the goal of spreading Roman Catholicism, starting with the Maluku Islands) in 1534. Between 1546 and 1547, the pioneer Christian missionary, Saint Francis Xavier, visited the islands and baptised several thousand locals. During the VOC era, the number of Roman Catholicism practitioners fell significantly, due to VOC policy of banning the religion. The hostility of the Dutch toward Catholicism is due to its history where the Protestant Dutch gained their independence after the Eighty Years War against Catholic Spain's rule. The most significant result was on the island of Flores and East Timor where VOC concentrated. Moreover, Roman Catholic priests were sent to prisons or punished and replaced by Protestant clergy from the Netherlands. One Roman Catholic priest was executed for celebrating Mass in prison during Jan Pieterszoon Coen's tenure as Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. After the VOC collapsed and with the legalisation of Catholicism in the Netherlands starting around 1800, Dutch Catholic clergy predominated until after Indonesia's independence. In present-day Flores, the royal house of Larantuka formed the only native Catholic kingdom in Southeast Asia around the 16th century, with the first king named Lorenzo.
  Other than Flores, Central Java also have significant numbers of Catholics. Catholicism started to spread in Central Java when Frans van Lith, a priest from the Netherlands came to Muntilan in 1896. Initially, his effort did not produce a satisfying result until 1904 when four Javanese chiefs from Kalibawang region asked him to give them education in the religion. On 15 December 1904, a group of 178 Javanese were baptised at Semagung, Muntilan, district Magelang, Central Java, near the border of Yogyakarta.
  As of 2010, 3% of Indonesians are Catholics, nearly half the number of Protestants at 7%. The practitioners mostly live in West Kalimantan, Papua and East Nusa Tenggara. The province of East Nusa Tenggara, where the island of Flores and West Timor are located, is the only province in Indonesia where Catholics are the majority (about 54.14% of the total population). In Java, next to Javanese, Catholicism also spread to Chinese Indonesians. In the present day, Catholic traditions close to Easter days remain, locally known as Semana Santa. It involves a procession carrying statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary (locally referred to as Tuan Ana and Tuan Ma respectively) to a local beach, then to Cathedral of the Queen of the Rosary, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Larantuka, Flores.
caption: Jakarta Cathedral, seat of the Archbishop of Jakarta.
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