In the center of every village in Slovakia, there is a church (and a pub). How important is the religion for people? How many of them belong to which church?
In the Population and Housing Census 2001 (performed by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic - www.statistics.sk), the citizens had to indicate their religious affiliation. The question was not mandatory, so 3% of the population have written nothing into the field 'Religion' ("náboženstvo").
Out of about 5.4 million inhabitants of Slovakia, more than two thirds declared their affiliation to the Roman-Catholic Church. Thirteen percent are churchless, but this number is much smaller than the 59% in the neighboring Czech Republic.
Roman-Catholic Church 68.9%
Evangelic Church of Augsburg Affiliation 6.9%
Greek-Catholic Church 4.1%
Reformed Christian Church 2.0%
Orthodox Church 0.9%
Other (Jewish, etc.) 1.1%
Unknown 3.0%
Without religious affiliation 13.0%
It looks like the people in Slovakia are very religious. Except for the fact, that most of them have been baptised as children and have proceeded other holy ceremonials, many of them visit the masses on Sunday.
However, since the new hypermarkets have opened on Sundays, many people prefer to go shopping instead of visiting the mass. The church officials claimed, that the people should not work on Sundays (they were talking about shop-assistants, not about firemen, policemen, nurses or bus-drivers), but some unofficial opinion poll showed, that about two thirds of the respondents wish they could go shopping even on Sundays.