section_path: Arts and culture/Religious affairs
section_name: Religious affairs
paragraph_text: Religious affairs
  
  Catherine's apparent embrace of all things Russian (including Orthodoxy) may have prompted her personal indifference to religion. She nationalised all of the church lands to help pay for her wars, largely emptied the monasteries, and forced most of the remaining clergymen to survive as farmers or from fees for baptisms and other services. Very few members of the nobility entered the church, which became even less important than it had been. She did not allow dissenters to build chapels, and she suppressed religious dissent after the onset of the French Revolution.
  
  However, in accord with her anti-Ottoman policy, Catherine promoted the protection and fostering of Christians under Turkish rule. She placed strictures on Catholics (ukaz of 23 February 1769), mainly Polish, and attempted to assert and extend state control over them in the wake of the partitions of Poland. For example, although Catholic parishes were allowed to retain their property and worship, Papal oversight of parishes was restricted to only theology. In its stead, Catherine appointed a Catholic bishop (later raising the position to archbishop) of Mohylev to administer all Catholic churches in her territory. Nevertheless, Catherine's Russia provided an asylum and a base for regrouping to the Jesuits following the suppression of the Jesuits in most of Europe in 1773.