| The number of Catholics in Australia at the time of the 2001 Census was approximately 5 million, or 26.6 per cent of the Australian population, easily the largest religious group in the nation. Anglicans, the next largest group, made up 20.7 per cent. The Catholic population increased by 202,674 but decreased as a proportion of the 2001 population by -0.38 per cent.
The proportion of Catholics in the Australian population has been declining in small increments since the 1991 census when Catholics represented 27.3 per cent, the highest since the first national census was held in 1911. The lowest value was 19.6 per cent in 1933, the year when the voluntary nature of the religion question was introduced, so that the proportion of people reporting a Christian religion fell from 97 per cent in 1921 to 86 per cent in 1933, a factor that may partly account for the drop in the Catholic proportion at that time.
Between 1933 and 1991, the proportion of the population identifying as Catholic gradually increased, mainly as a result of immigration, so that by the time of the 1986 Census, Catholics had become the largest religious group in Australia, outnumbering Anglicans for the first time. In particular, the Catholic population was boosted by the post-war arrival of many people from Italy, Malta and Yugoslavia.
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