This week’s Diwali festival in Moncton, New Brunswick was a celebration of a dream come true for the local South Asian community.
Numbering around 2,000, many members of the community gathered in a rented space on Milner Road for the opening of a new Hindu temple in their town – a vision that took many years to come to fruition.
“It will grow,” Ketan Raval, an organizer with the Hindu Society of New Brunswick, told the gathering of volunteers and devotees, adding that the new temple will not just be a place of worship, but a support center for newcomers to the region. .
As immigration pushes non-Christian religions into the country, the majority of the Canadian population is Christian, but their share is shrinking, Statistics Canada said. Islam is the second most cited religion.
In Saskatoon, a new mosque, school and community center are taking shape under the auspices of the Islamic Association of Saskatchewan (IAS).
Organizers stressed that the space would not just be for Muslims but a place to build bridges. If all goes well, the IAS plans to launch the $10 million project within two years.
In a quiet corner of Metro Vancouver’s Coquitlam suburb, Father Pio Kim and his mostly Korean congregation recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of their new St. Agnes Kim Parish Church.
According to British Columbia’s Catholic Weekly, the goal of the Korean parish, the second of its kind in the Archdiocese of Vancouver, is to become a “collaborative community” and a “prayer community.”
These are just a few examples of the country’s growing ethnocultural and religious diversity, which Statistics Canada says is largely driven by immigration, according to its latest census report. See the report here: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm?HPA=1
Drawing on data from more than 450 ethnic and cultural backgrounds, 200 places of birth, 100 religions and 450 languages, Statistics Canada researchers said immigration is a key driver of religions, especially non-Christian denominations in the country.
According to his analysis, immigrants made up the majority of Buddhists (68.9%), Muslims (63.1%), Hindus (62.9%) and Sikhs (53.8%) in the country.
In comparison, immigrants made up almost a quarter (23.0%) of Canada’s population in 2021. In addition, a large proportion of immigrants admitted from 2011 to 2021 reported a non-Christian religion: 18.9% reported being Muslim , followed by Hindu (9.0%) and Sikh (5.8%).
In 2021, more than 19.3 million people declared a Christian religion, or just over half of the Canadian population (53.3%). However, this percentage is down from 67.3% in 2011 and 77.1% in 2001.
Catholics are the largest Christian denomination in Canada, with 10.9 million people (29.9%) in 2021. The United Church (3.3%) and the Anglican Church (3.1%), two other Christian denominations, each numbered more than a million people. in Canada. Orthodox Christians (1.7%), Baptists (1.2%) and Pentecostals and other Charismatics (1.1%) were the most frequently cited other Christian denominations.
Here are some of the other key findings from Statistics Canada’s portrait of the country’s religious diversity;
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