Countries

Croatia

Also Known As Croatian

Europe

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Croatia." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/countries/croatia.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Croatia. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/countries/croatia

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-croatia,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Croatia},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/countries/croatia},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Croatia is overwhelmingly Catholic, and Catholicism has functioned as the marker distinguishing Croats from Orthodox Serbs and Bosnian Muslims within the same language area, which is why religion mapped so directly onto the wars of the 1990s. Four agreements concluded with the Holy See in 1996 and 1998 give the Catholic Church state funding, tax exemptions, chaplaincies and religious instruction in state schools on terms no other body holds. The figure of Alojzije Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb during the Ustasa state and later imprisoned by Tito, is contested to the point that a joint Catholic and Serbian Orthodox commission examined his case without reaching agreement. Marian devotion at Marija Bistrica draws the largest national pilgrimage, and the Medjugorje apparitions across the border in Herzegovina attract Croatian pilgrims in very large numbers.

Facts

Law and State

Establishment Status

Privileged Never Established 3

No church is established, but four agreements with the Holy See concluded in 1996 and 1998 give the Catholic Church state funding, tax exemptions, military and hospital chaplaincies and religious instruction in state schools on terms no other of Croatia's recognised communities holds.

State Funding Mechanism

Croatia funds the Catholic Church from the general state budget under a series of agreements it signed with the Holy See in 1996 and 1998. Article 17(iv) of the 1996 Agreement on Legal Questions commits Croatia to a further mutual agreement on economic subsidies the state will provide to Catholic Church institutions carrying out communal benefit work; a companion 1998 Agreement on Economic Issues, not itself read for this fact, is the instrument commonly cited for implementing that commitment through direct state payment toward clergy living costs and church institutions. Domestic debate over the arrangement, reported in Concordat Watch's own introductory commentary on the 1996 text rather than in the treaty itself, put the subsidies questioned in 2018 at almost two billion kuna, over 255 million euro, across the preceding three years. Other recognized religious communities in Croatia, including Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and several Protestant bodies, hold separately negotiated agreements with the state on parallel but not identical terms. 4

Apostasy or Blasphemy Law

Croatia's Criminal Code carries no offense of blasphemy as such. Religious insult instead falls under Article 325, public incitement to violence and hatred, which punishes anyone who publicly incites or distributes material calling for violence or hatred against a group, including on religious grounds, with imprisonment of up to three years. 3

Registration or Recognition Regime

The 2002 Law on the Legal Position of Religious Communities, amended in 2013, created a Register of Religious Communities kept by the Ministry of Justice. Registering is not obligatory, but a registered community gains legal-person status and tax benefits. A group with no prior legal-entity history needs at least 500 members and five years already registered as an association of at least three members before it can register as a religious community. The state separately signs bilateral agreements with individual registered communities, starting with the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Islamic Community in 2002 and followed by several Protestant and Orthodox bodies in 2003, that extend further funding and cooperation in areas such as education and health beyond registration alone. 3

Ban or Official Watchlist

Croatia's 2003 law on the legal status of religious communities requires a group to have operated as a registered association for at least five years and to count at least 500 members before it can register as a religious community and negotiate the funding and tax agreement the state grants the Roman Catholic Church and 53 other recognized communities. Communities already present before 2003 were grandfathered in without meeting the threshold, leaving newer and smaller groups without the same standing. 3

Concordat Basis

Four agreements with the Holy See, concluded in 1996 and 1998, govern the Catholic Church's state funding, tax exemptions, chaplaincy access and role in religious instruction in Croatia. 3

Disputed

Legal Status

Four agreements with the Holy See concluded in 1996 and 1998 give the Catholic Church state funding, tax exemptions, military and hospital chaplaincies and religious instruction in state schools on terms no other body holds; sixteen other communities have narrower agreements. 3

Croatia's relationship with the Catholic Church rests on four agreements concluded with the Holy See in 1996 and 1998, granting the Church state funding, tax exemptions, chaplaincies in the military and hospitals, and religious instruction in state schools on terms no other religious body in Croatia holds; sixteen other religious communities hold separate, narrower agreements granting fewer benefits. The State Department's report records this tiered arrangement as the country's current legal structure without characterising it as either unequal treatment or a legitimate recognition of the Catholic Church's particular historical role in Croatian national identity, which is how it is defended domestically. The dispute, where one exists, is between minority communities holding the narrower agreements, who read the tiered structure as unequal treatment, and the state's position that the historical concordat reflects a distinct church-state relationship. Because the concordat is a treaty-level agreement with the Holy See, revising the tier would require renegotiating an international agreement rather than passing a domestic law.

Demographics

Religious Composition

Around 79 per cent Roman Catholic, with Serbian Orthodox near 4 per cent and Muslims near 2 per cent (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020; Croatian census). 1

Government

Capital

Zagreb 2

Government Type

parliamentary republic 2

Sovereignty Status

Sovereign UN member state 2

Established Year

1991 2

25 June 1991 (from Yugoslavia); notable earlier dates: ca. 925 (Kingdom of Croatia established), 1 December 1918 (Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes established, later became Yugoslavia)

Geography

Latitude

45.1 degrees north 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Longitude

15.2 degrees east 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Location

Learn More

Religion and History in Croatia

Croatia is the western edge of a line that runs down through the Balkans and has been drawn and redrawn since the division of the Roman Empire: Latin Christianity on one side, Greek on the other. Croats took their Christianity from Rome and their alphabet, eventually, from the Latin script, while Serbs took theirs from Constantinople and wrote in Cyrillic, and the two peoples speak varieties of one language. That is why religion in this region works as an ethnic marker in a way it does not in countries where language already does the job, and why the wars of the 1990s mapped so exactly onto confessional lines.

There is an older Croatian peculiarity worth recording. The Glagolitic alphabet, the oldest Slavic script, survived in Croatian coastal and island parishes for centuries in Roman Catholic use, with the liturgy celebrated in Church Slavonic under papal tolerance. Priests trained in it were known as glagoljasi, and the Baska tablet from around 1100 is among the earliest monuments of the Croatian language.

The Catholic Church's present legal position rests on four agreements concluded with the Holy See in 1996 and 1998, covering legal status, economic questions, education and culture, and pastoral care in the armed forces and prisons. They provide state funding, tax exemptions and religious instruction in state schools on terms no other religious body in Croatia holds, and they are treaties, so they cannot be altered by ordinary legislation. Attempts to reopen them have not gone far.

Marian devotion is strong. The national shrine at Marija Bistrica draws the largest pilgrimage in the country.

Stepinac, and a Commission That Could Not Agree

Alojzije Stepinac was Archbishop of Zagreb during the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustasa regime installed under Axis occupation in 1941 which carried out mass killings of Serbs, Jews and Roma. He was tried by the Yugoslav communist authorities in 1946, convicted, imprisoned and later held under house arrest until his death. He was made a cardinal in confinement and beatified by John Paul II in 1998.

The two accounts of him are not slightly different, they are opposed. In the Croatian Catholic account he welcomed the state at its formation as most Croats did, then protested repeatedly against its killings and its forced conversions, sheltered people, and was convicted in a show trial for refusing to break the Croatian church from Rome. In the Serbian Orthodox account, and in a substantial body of critical scholarship, his protests were too late, too private and too weak against a regime whose crimes he had the standing to denounce publicly and did not.

What makes this case unusual is that the two churches tried to settle it together. At the initiative of Pope Francis, a joint commission of Catholic and Serbian Orthodox members examined the record and met over an extended period. It did not reach agreement, and said so. The canonisation has not proceeded.

That outcome is worth recording precisely because it is a failure. Two churches with every institutional incentive to produce a form of words examined the same documents and could not converge, which is a stronger statement about the state of the evidence than either side's advocacy. This entry does not adjudicate it either.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Bosnian War

This source names Croatia directly: "and Bosnian Croat forces backed by Croatia."

Source Bosnia: A Short History (Malcolm)Noel Malcolm

Christianity

Roman Catholicism holds about 79 per cent affiliation and functions as the marker distinguishing Croats within a shared language area.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Sources

1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020

Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source

2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)

Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source

3. International Religious Freedom Report

United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 20232003 law on the legal status of religious communitiesView the Source

4. Concordat Watch: Croatia, Agreement on Legal Questions (1996), Text

Concordat WatchView the Source

The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition

Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source

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