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The Catholic Church in Australia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual and administrative leadership of the Holy See. Australia is a majority Christian but pluralistic society with no established religion. In 2011 there were approximately 5.4 million Australian Catholics (25.3% of the population). Catholicism arrived in Australia with the British First Fleet in 1788. The first Australian Catholics were mainly Irish, but Australian Catholics now originate from a great variety of national backgrounds. The church is a major provider of health, education and charitable services: Catholic Social Services Australia's 63 member organisations help more than a million Australians every year; and the Catholic education system has more than 650,000 students (18% of student population).〔 Australia has 32 dioceses and 1,363 parishes. Catholic Religious Australia, the peak body for leaders of religious institutes and societies of apostolic life resident in Australia, comprises members from more than 180 congregations of sisters, brothers and religious priests living in Australia. Mary MacKillop, who founded an educational religious institute of sisters, the Josephites, in the 19th century, became the first Australian to be canonised as a saint in 2010. The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is headed by Archbishop Denis Hart and there are two Australian cardinals: the current Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, George Pell, and the former President of the Vatican Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Edward Cassidy. Australia played host to World Youth Day 2008. ==Demographics and structure== According to the 2011 Australian National Census, there were 5,439,257 Catholics in Australia. This represented 25.3% of the overall Australian population and the largest single Christian church (being slightly larger than the Anglican and Uniting churches combined). Until the 1986 census, Australia's most populous Christian church was the Anglican Church of Australia. Since then Catholics have outnumbered Anglicans by an increasing margin. One rationale to explain this relates to changes in Australia's immigration patterns. Before the Second World War, the majority of immigrants to Australia came from the United Kingdom and most Catholic immigrants came from Ireland. After the war, Australia's immigration diversified and more than 6.5 million migrants arrived in the following 60 years, including more than a million Catholics from Italy, Malta, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Croatia and Hungary.〔 Catholicism is now the largest church tradition in Australia and the Catholic population continues to grow, although weekly Mass attendance has declined from an estimated 74% in the mid-50's to around 14% in 2006. There are seven archdioceses and 32 dioceses, with an estimated 3,000 priests and 9,000 men and women in institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life, including six dioceses which cover the whole country: one each for those who belong to the Chaldean, Maronite, Melkite, Syro-Malabar and Ukrainian rites and one for those serving in the Australian Defence Forces. There is also a personal ordinariate for former Anglicans which has a similar status to a diocese.〔http://ordinariate.org.au/About%20Us/aboutus_OLSC.htm〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Roman Catholicism in Australia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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