Immigration is swelling attendance at Britain’s Catholic churches to such an extent that Roman Catholicism seems likely to become the dominant religion in Britain for the first time since the Reformation.
A new report by the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge says the influx of migrants could be the Catholic community’s ‘greatest threat’ or its ‘greatest opportunity’. It suggests that hundreds of thousands of worshippers could descend on parishes in the next few years.
With new countries joining the European Union in recent years, and up to 95% of immigrants from countries like Poland practising Catholics, the potential increase in attendance is huge.
The face of Catholicism across Britain seems to be changing from Anglo-Irish, with a mindset of managing steady decline, to an organisation of unprecedented expansion and change in ethnic make-up
