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More non-denominational than Catholics in Switzerland for the first time

Swiss church religion non-denominational
In 1970, only 1% of the population had no religious affiliation. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

For the first time, there are more people with no religious affiliation in Switzerland than Catholics.

At 34% of the population, the group with no religious affiliation has overtaken Catholics (32%).

In third place are the Protestant Reformed, as the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) announced on Friday. It is based on figures from the year 2022.

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According to the Federal Statistical Office, the proportion of the population with no religious affiliation has increased continuously in Switzerland over the past 50 years. While only 1% of the population had no religious affiliation in 1970, this proportion had risen to 11% by the turn of the millennium.

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By 2010, it had almost doubled to 20%. by 2022, 34% of the population aged 15 and over no longer belonged to any religious community.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

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