page_title: Religion in Italy
section_title: Immigration and future scenarios
hierarchical_section_title: Religion in Italy / Overview / Immigration and future scenarios
caption_attribution_description: English: Masjid of Rome is the biggest mosque in Western world.
context_page_description: Religion in Italy is characterised by the predominance of Christianity and an increasing diversity of religious practices, beliefs and denominations. Most Christians in Italy adhere to the Catholic Church, whose headquarters are in Vatican City, Rome.
  Christianity has been present in the Italian Peninsula since the 1st century.
  According to the 2012 Global Religious Landscape survey by the Pew Research Center, 83.3% of the country's residents are Christians, 12.4% are irreligious, atheist or agnostic, 3.7% are Muslims and 0.6% adhere to other religions. Other sources give different accounts of Italy's Islamic population, usually around 2%. According to other sources, up to 10% of residents, both Italian citizens and foreign residents, profess a faith which is different from Catholicism and the number of atheists and agnostics is rising. Among religious minorities, Islam is the largest, followed by Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism.
  According to the 2017 Being Christian in Western Europe survey by Pew, 58% of Italians consider religion to be very or somewhat important.
context_section_description: Immigration has brought to Italy many religious minorities, especially Islam, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Oriental Orthodoxy. By the numbers, in 2015 the country was home to around 1,850,000 Muslims and virtually 1,700,000 Orthodox Christians. Among the latter, especially relevant are the Romanian Orthodox Church, which has a diocese of Italy, and the Greek Orthodox Church (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople), whose Archdiocese of Italy and Malta and Exarchate of Southern Europe has its see in Venice. Massimo Introvigne, founder and director of CESNUR (an Italian think tank devoted to religious studies) and main author of L'enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia, predicts that, thanks to continued immigration from Eastern Europe, Orthodox Christians could soon become the country's second largest religious group, overtaking Muslims.
  Also Protestantism, especially in its evangelical and Pentecostal forms, is on the rise: Introvigne recalls how Giorgio Bouchard, a Waldensian pastor, told him that "when he was born, the typical Italian Protestant was a man, lived in Piedmont, had a last name like Bouchard and was a Waldensian", while "today, the typical Italian Protestant believer is a woman, lives in Campania or Sicily, is named Esposito and is a Pentecostal." Not surprisingly the Assemblies of God in Italy (150,000 members), the Federation of Pentecostal Churches (50,000) and several smaller evangelical/Pentecostal denominations have the majority of their communities in the South. Additionally, several foreign-born churches, especially African initiated churches, mostly evangelical and/or Pentecostal, are taking roots in the country, especially in the North.
  Among the fastest-growing new religious denominations in Italy a special place is held by the Jehovah's Witnesses (who count around 420,000 faithful, including both members and other people regularly attending the Congregation's meetings). Then come four faiths professed mainly by immigrants: Buddhists (260,000), Hindus (180,000), Sikhs (150,000), and Latter-day Saints (26,000). According to Caritas Italiana (the CEI's charitable arm), in 2015 the immigrant population was 53.8% Christian (30.5% Orthodox, 18.3% Catholic, 4.3% Protestant and 0.7% other), 32.2% Muslim, 2.9% Hindu and 2.2% Buddhist. According to the same source, in 2012 Italy was home to 850 "African Neo-Pentecostal churches", 750 foreign-language Catholic communities, 655 mosques or other Islamic houses of worship, 355 Orthodox parishes, 126 Buddhist temples, 37 Sikh ones and 2 Hindu ones. The Mosque of Rome is one of the largest outside the Muslim world.
caption: The Mosque of Rome
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