Catholicism

Catholicism is the largest sect of Christianity

Catholics in Ruled Britannia
Catholicism was the official state religion of England until the English Reformation under Henry VIII in 1529, at which point England became a Protestant kingdom. Throughout the remainder of the sixteenth century, religion became something of a political football, with Protestantism supported by Henry VIII and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth and Catholicism supported by Queen Mary Tudor and the Spanish-backed Queen Isabella.

The majority of England's neighbors, including Spain, France, and Ireland, were Catholic kingdoms, but in the Spanish colony of the Netherlands a Protestant rebellion against King Philip II battled Catholic forces with English support. The Protestant Queen Elizabeth executed her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, who by blood had the strongest claim on Elizabeth's throne after her death, in 1587.

Philip II, who like all Hapsburgs was devoutly Catholic, and who had briefly been king of a Catholic England during the reign of his second wife, Mary Tudor, as Queen of England, dispatched the Spanish Armada to invade and conquer England in 1588. The mission was successful, and for the next ten years, through Spanish, English, and Irish soldiers and the English Inquisition, Catholicism was supported as England's official state religion, and Protestants were persecuted.

When William and Robert Cecil orchestrated and led an uprising against Isabella and Albert in 1598, the general pattern was expected to be that English Protestants would support the rebellion and English Catholics would resist it. However, many English Catholics, tired of rule of their country by a foreign power, also supported the restoration of Elizabeth--though persecution of Catholics in England became fierce in the weeks and months following Elizabeth's restoration.

Catholics in World War
Due to the support of Pope Pius XII for the Race, Catholics in most of the territories administered by the Race tended to support the alien government, though they refused to worship the spirits of emperors past, and there was at least one uprising against the Race in the predominantly Catholic country of Argentina. The Catholic Poles supported the Race in Poland and put their militia under the chain of command of the Conquest Fleet when Poland was invaded by Germany in 1965.

In Northern Ireland, Catholics opposed the presence of British occupying authorities.

Catholics in Southern Victory
The Canadian province of Quebec had a Catholic majority at the beginning of the Great War, but the British authorities favored Protestantism. This religious difference, along with a linguistic difference, led the Quebecois to feel disaffected from Canada. US President Theodore Roosevelt used this disaffection to his advantage when he created the Republic of Quebec in 1916. The Republic's foundation was supported by several prominent Catholic Church figures, including Bishop Pascal Talon.

In the United States, Catholics made up a sizable segment of the population in the Northeastern region of the country. President Al Smith of New York was a Catholic.

In the Confederate States, the only sizable Catholic populations were in the Hispanic states of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Cuba. Though the CS was predominantly Protestant and overtly favored that religion in many ways, Catholicism was a tolerated minority religion, especially under Jake Featherston, who saw no particular importance in any religion at all.