Religion and History in Malta

Malta is overwhelmingly Catholic, among the most religiously homogeneous countries in Europe at around 90 percent by most estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, though religious practice among younger Maltese has declined notably in recent years even as formal affiliation remains high. Christianity's arrival in Malta is traditionally dated to St Paul's shipwreck on the island around 60 CE, an event recounted in the biblical Acts of the Apostles and central to Maltese national religious identity, commemorated annually and reflected in the island's exceptionally dense concentration of churches.

The Knights Hospitaller, a Catholic military-religious order granted the island in 1530 by Emperor Charles V, ruled Malta for over two and a half centuries, building Valletta as a fortress capital explicitly conceived to defend Christian Europe against Ottoman naval power following the order's successful defense during the 1565 Great Siege of Malta, a landmark confrontation between Christian and Ottoman Muslim forces in the central Mediterranean. British colonial rule from 1814 introduced a small Protestant Anglican presence without displacing Catholic dominance, and Malta's 1964 independence constitution preserved Catholicism's established status inherited from centuries of uninterrupted Catholic institutional continuity.