Roman Catholicism in Switzerland

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The Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland is part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and curia in Rome.

There are approximately 3 million Catholics in Switzerland - around 42% of the total population. The country is divided into six dioceses; Basel, Lausanne-Geneva and Fribourg, Chur, Lugano, Sankt Gallen and Sion plus two territorials abbeys, Saint Maurice and Einsiedeln. The Swiss catholic bishops together with the two territorial abbots are organised within the Swiss Bishop's conference whose chairman is the current Bishop of Chur, Amédée Grab who will be replaced in 2007 by the Bishop of Basel, Kurt Koch.

As a big exception in the Catholic world, all Swiss dioceses are immediately subjects to the Holy See, and thus Switzerland has no Metropolitan see. In the last 30 years, mainly during the conflict with todays Archbishop of Vaduz and former Bishop of Chur, Wolfgang Haas, there have been discussions to make a major reform of the structure of the Catholic Church in Switzerland, which would probably also lead to the establishment of an Archdiocese (probably with its seat in Lucerne) as Metropolitan see for the church in Switzerland. Today, the discussions are not yet over and mainly the status of the territory of the Canton of Zürich as part of the Diocese of Chur, the too big and also splitted Diocese of Basel and the lack of a Metropolitan Archbishop as head of the Swiss Catholic Church stay unsolved.

There are actually three Swiss Cardinals; Henri Schwery, Gilberto Agustoni and Georges Cottier, of whom one (Cardinal Schwery) could participate in the next conclave.