The Catholic Church in England and Wales is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Pope. It traces its history to Catholic Christendom, the Western Latin Church, particularized and recorded in Roman Britain as far back as the 1st century, and later judicially bonded to the See of Rome in the 6th century, when Gregory the Great through his Benedictine, Roman missionary, Augustine of Canterbury, established in 597 AD a direct link from the Kingdom of Kent to the Holy See. This ancient link to Irenaeus's source of Christian guidance, the See of Rome, has enriched its inter-church identity, not only across Britain and continental Europe, but also and especially globally within what is sometimes referred to as the Catholic Communion of Churches.Today, the English Catholic Church regards Augustine as one of its regional founders, bonding the present head of the Catholic Church in England directly to Pope Gregory's modern day successor, Pope Francis. This unbroken line of history, going back to Augustine, is symbolised in the bestowal of the pallium, a papal liturgical vestment on the Catholic successor to St Augustine, the Archbishop of Westminster. To highlight this episcopal and historic continuity, the Archdiocese of Westminster uses the installation rites of pre-Reformation Catholic archbishops of Canterbury and earlier archbishops of Westminster for the installation of each new Archbishop of Westminster. Thus, just as Pope Gregory conferred the pallium or woolen cloak on St Augustine, Pope Francis conferred the same symbol of unity on the current head of the Catholic Church in England, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, when he took office.The dynamics of the pre-Reformation bond between the Catholic Church in England and the Apostolic See remained in effect for nearly a thousand years. That is, there was no doctrinal difference between the faith of the English and the rest of Catholic Christendom, especially after calculating the date of Easter at the Council of Whitby in 667 and formalizing other customs according to the See of Rome. The designation English Church was made use of, but always in the sense of the term as indicating that part of the one Catholic Church in communion with the Pope that was localised in England. Other regions were localised in Scotland , France , Spain , etc. These regional cognomens or designations were commonly used in Rome by staff or officials to identify a locality of the universal church, but never to imply any breach with the Holy See. In 1534, however, during the reign of Henry VIII, the church, through a series of legislative acts between 1533 and 1536, became independent of the pope for a period as a national church with Henry declaring himself Supreme Head. Then, during the reign of Henry's son, King Edward VI, from 1547–53, the liturgical and sacramental life of the English Church was radically altered to the extent that, with its Protestant establishment and leadership, it became a new kind of ecclesial foundation.The English Church was brought back under papal authority in 1553 and doctrinal and liturgical conformity at the beginning of the reign of Queen Mary I. The restoration of papal authority was celebrated by the majority of the nation and enforced by the Marian persecutions against Protestants. Her harshness was a success but at the cost of alienating a fairly large section of English society which had been moving away from some traditional Catholic devotional practices. The English it seems were quite caught up with the reforming movement on the Continent. At the time they were neither Calvinist nor Lutheran, but certainly leaning toward Protestantism .Queen Elizabeth I, a moderate non-ideological Protestant, came to the throne in November 1558. She was intent upon reversing her half-sister's arrangements. Her accession to the throne was not greeted with enthusiasm: the people had liked Catharine of Aragon and thought of Mary as the rightful, legitimate heir. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was a Protestant and the very rituals with which the parish had celebrated her accession would be swept away. She shifted the church's teaching and practice in a reformed direction, with modifications made in a more Catholic direction in the Act of Uniformity. In 1559, however, the Act of Supremacy proclaimed her Supreme Governor of the Church of England. This caused a rift between Catholics and herself.In 1570, Pope Pius V responded in his bull Regnans in Excelsis, calling on all Catholics to rebel against Elizabeth and excommunicating anyone who obeyed her. The Parliament of England made the fact of being a Jesuit or seminarian treasonable in 1571. Priests found celebrating Mass were often hanged, drawn and quartered, rather than being burned at the stake. The Catholic Church continued in England, although it was at times subject to various forms of persecution. Most recusant members , notably in heavily Catholic areas in the north and among elements of the gentry along with a number of peers, practiced their faith in private for all practical purposes. In 1766, the Pope recognized the English Monarchy as lawful, and this led eventually to the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829. Dioceses were re-established by Pope Pius IX in 1850. Surprisingly many English Catholics opposed this. Along with the 22 Latin Rite dioceses, there are the Eastern Catholic diocese of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Holy Family of London and the Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of Great Britain. At the 2001 United Kingdom census, there were 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, some eight per cent of the population. One hundred years earlier, in 1901, they represented only 4.8 per cent of the population. In 1981, 8.7 per cent of the population of England and Wales were Catholic. In 2009, an Ipsos Mori poll found that 9.6 per cent, or 5.2 million persons of all ethnicities were Catholic in England and Wales. Sizeable populations include North West England where one in five is Catholic, a result of large-scale Irish immigration in the nineteenth century as well as the high number of English recusants in Lancashire.
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