Catholicism could become the main religion in Britain for the first time since the Reformation, it was claimed today.This is due to the huge influx of migrants from Catholic countries, according to a report.
It claims that the growth in the church's ranks from both legal and illegal migrants could become Catholicism's "greatest threat" or its "greatest challenge" in this country.
The growth in the church's ranks has come as the Church of England and the Anglican provinces in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, face a continuing decline.
The Catholic church is often the first point of contact for thousands of migrants who arrive speaking little English, have no immediate employment and nowhere to live.
Some churches have found they are being used as job centres and social welfare offices by migrants from Catholic countries such as Poland.
Monsignor Tadeusz Kukla, who is in charge of ministering to Polish Catholics in England and Wales, estimates that the number in London has doubled to 600,000 since that country's accession to the EU in 2004.
He said the total was growing every week, transforming the makeup of many London parishes from what were predominantly elderly, white English-Irish congregations.
Monsignor Kukla, who operates from a church in Islington, said: "In London we have 12 Polish Catholic churches and we are trying to open new centres. We give pastoral help, but people come with all sorts of pastoral questions for the priests.
Many come with their whole families and they want to know about schools. We organise talks and tell them how to live in a big city like London."
Today's report, by the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge, said most of Britain's Catholic migrants settle in London, where some parishes are now holding Sunday Mass from 8am to 8pm to cope with the influx.
Figures from 2005 show there are 4.2million Catholics in England and Wales, under one fifth of the 25 million baptised Anglicans and double the number of Muslims. But those figures will have been overtaken by the recent arrival of so many Catholics from eastern Europe.
The scale of the growth became apparent last May when thousands of Catholic migrants attended a Mass in Westminster, prompting the dioceses of Brentwood, Southwark and Westminster to commission the report.
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