Topic summary
Catholic Europe
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Catholic Church in Europe.
Demographics
About 35% of the population of Europe today is Catholic, but only about a quarter of all Catholics worldwide reside in Europe. This is due in part to the movement and immigration at various times of largely Catholic European ethnic groups (such as the Irish, Italians, Poles, Portuguese, and Spaniards) to continents such as the Americas and Australia. Furthermore, Catholicism has been spread outside Europe through both historical Catholic missionary activity, especially in Latin America, and the past colonization and conversion of native people by Catholic European countries, specifically the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Belgian colonial empire, in regions such as South America, the Caribbean, Central Africa and West Africa, and Southeast Asia.