section_path: Demographics/Religion
section_name: Religion
paragraph_text: Religion
  
  According to the 2021 census, 71.3% of all Polish citizens adhere to the Roman Catholic Church, with 6.9% identifying as having no religion and 20.6% refusing to answer.
  
  Poland is one of the most religious countries in Europe, where Roman Catholicism remains a part of national identity and Polish-born Pope John Paul II is widely revered. In 2015, 61.6% of respondents outlined that religion is of high or very high importance. However, church attendance has greatly decreased in recent years; only 28% of Catholics attended mass weekly in 2021, down from around half in 2000. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Of more than 100 countries studied by the Pew Research Center in 2018, Poland was secularizing the fastest, as measured by the disparity between the religiosity of young people and their elders."
  
  Freedom of religion in Poland is guaranteed by the Constitution, and Poland's concordat with the Holy See enables the teaching of religion in public schools. Historically, the Polish state maintained a high degree of religious tolerance and provided asylum for refugees fleeing religious persecution in other parts of Europe. Poland hosted Europe's largest Jewish diaspora, and the country was a centre of Ashkenazi Jewish culture and traditional learning until the Holocaust.
  
  Contemporary religious minorities include Orthodox Christians, Protestants, including Lutherans of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church, Pentecostals in the Pentecostal Church in Poland, Adventists in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and other smaller Evangelical denominations, including Jehovah's Witnesses, Eastern Catholics, Mariavites, Jews, Muslims (Tatars), and neopagans, some of whom are members of the Native Polish Church.
  
  Pilgrimages to the Jasna Góra Monastery, a shrine dedicated to the Black Madonna, take place annually.