Census: Most "other Christians" members of the Catholic Church

Today, at a press conference, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics clarified the final results of the 2021 Census on the ethno-cultural characteristics of the Croatian population, where it was pointed out that, despite the significantly lower number of people who declared themselves Catholic compared to the previous census, the vast majority of " other Christians" declared that they belonged to the Catholic Church. One of the officials of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics said that the subjects who self-enumerated were obviously in a hurry to fill out the questionnaire and did not read in detail what was written in the methodological explanations.

The Director General of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, Lidija Brković, said that it is about additional clarification of the data of certain characteristics of the first part of the final results of the Population Census, which were published on September 12, given, as she said, exceptional media interest and possible ambiguities in the interpretation of the published data.

We remind readers that, apart from the fact that Croatia has less than 3.9 million inhabitants - 413 thousand less than ten years ago - the public also heard about the significant decline in the number of Catholics - less than 79 percent compared to 86 percent ten years ago.

However, as stated even today at the press conference, the vast majority of people who are in the category of other Christians declared that they belong to the Catholic Church.

Among other Christians, 157,388 people belong to the Catholic Church

Brković stated that according to religious affiliation in the Republic of Croatia, 78.97 percent are Catholics, 3.32 percent are Orthodox, 1.32 percent are Muslims, 4.71 percent are non-believers, and that 1.72 percent did not want to declare themselves.

“What caused the most reactions was the number of other Christians out of 186,960 people and the number of people who entered the category of other religions, movements and worldviews, 37,066 of them,” said Brković.

It was stated that of those 186,960 other Christians, or 4.82 percent, 180,368 persons declared themselves Christians, and of these, 157,388 persons declared themselves to belong to the Catholic Church.

“What we want to say is that citizens declared themselves as Catholics in 79 percent of cases,” said Damir Plesac, chief coordinator of the Population Census.

“And 180,000 of them declared themselves to be Christians, but to the second question about religious communities, they answered what they did. Some answered that they were members of the Catholic Church, some of the Orthodox Church, and so on. Which does not mean that there are 83 percent of people who are members of the Catholic Church because there is also an answer modality that they either do not want to declare or that they are not members of any church. Which means, you can be a Catholic, but you don't have to be a member of the Catholic Church,” he added.

To the remarks of journalists about the questionability of such a methodology, Plesac replied that they are mixing two issues - about religion and religious community.

"The respondents were obviously in a hurry to fill out the questionnaire"

Dubravka Rogić-Hadžalić, head of the demographic and social statistics sector, said that compared to the 2011 census, they had a different enumeration method, which, she said, "had a significant impact." She stated that two thirds of respondents who were in the categories of other Christians and believers were self-enumerated, while one third were enumerated by enumerators.

“This obviously had a significant impact on the structure of the answers we received,” she added.

Rogić-Hadžalić said that another difference compared to the 2011 census is that in addition to the question "religion" they introduced the question "religious community".

“What can we assume happened? We can assume that during the self-enumeration - and 44 percent of citizens were enumerated with self-enumeration - the respondents were obviously in a hurry to fill out the questionnaire and did not read in detail what was written in the methodological explanations,” said Rogić-Hadžalić.

Rogić-Hadžalić said that they should not have suggested to the citizens how they would express themselves, to which one of the journalists said that they actually suggested it by the way they asked the question.

She also said that in some cases the respondent may not have understood, but that the questions were asked in the simplest possible way.

“When asked about religion, the respondent declares himself freely. We cannot influence or change his answer,” said Rogić-Hadžalić.

Source: HRT