Although the number of Catholics in the Netherlands has decreased significantly in recent decades, the Catholic Church remains today the largest religious group in the Netherlands. Once known as a Protestant country, Catholicism surpassed Protestantism after the First World War, and in 2012 the Netherlands was only 10% Dutch Protestant (down from 60% in the early 20th century; defections are primarily due to rising lack of affiliation that started to occur two decades earlier than in Dutch Catholicism). There are an estimated 3.882 million Catholics registered (2015) by the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, 22.9% of the population down from more than 40% in the 1970s. The Catholic Church in the Netherlands has suffered an official membership loss of 650,000 members between 2003 (4,532,000 pers. / 27.9% overall population) and 2015 (3,882,000 pers. / 22.9% overall population), The number of people registered as Catholic in the Netherlands continues to decrease, roughly by half a percent annually.