page_title: Religion in the Outer Hebrides
section_title: Current status
hierarchical_section_title: Religion in the Outer Hebrides / Catholicism in the Outer Hebrides / Current status
caption_attribution_description: English: Our Lady of the Isles, by Hew Lorimer, on South Uist.
context_page_description: The Outer Hebrides are a unique religious area in contemporary Scotland and Britain. The northern island is dominated by Calvinist 'free churches', and has been described as "the last bastion of Sabbath observance in the UK". It is also home to a unique form of Gaelic psalm singing known as precenting. The southern islands of South Uist and Barra are the last remnants of native pre-Reformation Scottish Catholicism. Barra was once dubbed "the island the Reformation did not reach".
  The Outer Hebrides are also home to some of Britain's most important pre-Christian religious sites. The most significant is the Callanish Stones on the isle of Lewis, which are notable megalithic sites dating back some 5000 years - older than Stonehenge.
context_section_description: The 2011 Scottish Census found that unlike those in the Northern islands, the people of the southern islands were overwhelmingly Catholic. South Uist, the second most populated of the Outer Hebrides, was 90% Catholic, while Barra was 81.5%  Catholic. The small islands of Eriskay (94%) and Vatersay (90%) were also heavily Catholic, while Benbecula, further north, was evenly divided between Catholics (55%) and Protestants (45%).
  Thus the southernmost of the Outer Hebrides are the most Catholic parts of all of Scotland.  The two most Catholic civil parishes in the entire country are in the Outer Hebrides:
caption: Our Lady of the Isles, on South Uist
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