In the past, France was a predominantly Roman Catholic country. Since the 1970s, France has become a very secular country. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen says that Freedom of religion is constitutionally a right. Laïcité implies that the government and government institutions should not endorse any particular religion or intervene in religious dogma.
Occasionally, in France, tensions erupt in France about alleged discrimination against minorities. After Catholism, Islam is the second largest religion preached in France.
The French government does not maintain any records of the statistics of the religion of the inhabitants of France. The percentage of people practicing a particular religion in France was mentioned in the CIA World Factbook. It mentions that 83 to 88% of the population practices Roman Catholism. 5 to 10% of the French population practice Islam. 2% Protestants and 1% Jewish are part of the French population.
The Church of France is a part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. It's under the spiritual leadership of the Pope. There are about 45 million baptized Catholics in France. About 23,000 priests serve the baptized Catholics of France. Some surveys have come out with results that show that 54% of the French are atheist.
Before the French Revolution, the Catholic Church was the official state religion of France. History has it that after the conversion to Christianity of Clovis I, this European country was called the "the eldest daughter of the Church. In the 16th century, during the Wars of the religion, Catholics waged war on the Protestants. The year 1598, holds a special place as this was the year, when the Edict of Nantes established freedom of religion. The 1801 Concordat was established by Napoleon Bonaparte, under which the State subsidized the Catholic religion, Judaism, Lutheran and Calvinist branches of Protestantism.
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