Catholic Church in Iceland
Open-knowledge reference entry

The Catholic Church in Iceland (Icelandic: Kaþólska kirkjan á Íslandi) is part of the Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope. The island is served by a single diocese, the Diocese of Reykjavík, having a total of seven parishes. As of 2015, the ordinary is bishop Dávid Bartimej Tencer. The diocese is directly subject to the Holy See. Besides that there is one parish of Ukrainian Greek Catholic church under the jurisdiction of Apostolic Exarchate of Germany and Scandinavia.
Statistics
As of 2022, there are 14,723 Catholics in Iceland, with 6 diocesan priests, 9 religious order priests, and 38 sisters in religious orders. Catholics represent 3.91% of the Icelandic population and are growing in number rapidly, due in large part to Polish immigration to Iceland. In an interview with Catholic foundation Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop David Tencer said he believes the real number of Catholics could be closer to 50,000. The Diocese of Reykjavík covers the whole of Iceland. The diocese has a cathedral, Christ the King Cathedral (Dómkirkja Krists Konungs) in Reykjavík, and a number of smaller churches and chapels in the larger towns around the country.
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This entry incorporates text from “Catholic Church in Iceland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.