According to a recent survey by Statistics Austria, there are also significantly more people without a religious denomination, who are already the largest group in Vienna. After all, 77.6 percent of the people in Austria profess to be a religious community. The development of the religions was very different. In 1951, 89 percent professed to be Catholic, in 1971 it was still 87 percent. Since then, the value has fallen significantly, recently even at a faster pace. In 2001 it was just under 74 percent, in the previous year the Roman Catholic Austrians made up just over 55 percent of the population.
It was not unlike the Protestants. The proportion of Protestant Christians has fallen from 6.2 to 3.8 percent over the past 70 years, and the Old Catholic Church has also shrunk from 0.5 to 0.1 percent.
The development is quite different for Orthodox and Muslims, who gained shares primarily through immigration to Austria. Data for Islam are available for the first time for 1971. At that time, just 0.3 percent stated that they were Muslims. In 2021 it was 8.3 percent, with the proportion having doubled in the previous 20 years. More or less the same development took place in this period for the Orthodox, for whom figures have only been available since 2001. Since then, their share has increased from 2.2 to 4.9 percent.
Third climbers in this period are the non-denominational, who have increased their share from 12 to 22.4 percent over the past 20 years. For comparison: in 1951 it was not even four percent. By far the largest proportion of non-denominational people is in Vienna (34 percent). The federal capital is also the outlier among the Orthodox and Muslims with a good eleven and almost 15 percent of the population respectively. In contrast, in Vienna there are only just under 32 percent Catholics. In all other federal states they represent an absolute majority, in Tyrol with 66.2 percent even almost a two-thirds majority.
Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas sees a trend towards more religious diversity as a driver of development in addition to the sharp increase in secularization. After all, there are also 26,000 Buddhists in Austria, for example. This 0.3 percent is higher than the 0.1 percent of those of the Israelite faith.
Source: Nachrichten
