The Church of Scotland is a Presbyterian denomination of Christianity that holds the status of the national church in Scotland. It is one of the country's largest, having 259,200 members in 2023. While active membership in the church has declined significantly in recent decades, the government Scottish Household Survey found that 20% of the Scottish population, or over one million people, identified the Church of Scotland as their religious identity in 2019. The Church of Scotland's governing system is presbyterian in its approach, therefore, no one individual or group within the church has more or less influence over church matters. There is no one person who acts as the head of faith, as the church believes that role is the "Lord God's". As a proper noun, the Kirk is an informal name for the Church of Scotland used in the media and by the church itself.
Sir Iain Richard Torrance, is a retired Church of Scotland minister, theologian and academic. He is Pro-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, Honorary Professor of Early Christian Doctrine and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, President and Professor of Patristics Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, and an Extra Chaplain to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland. He was formerly Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Dean of the Chapel Royal in Scotland, and Dean of the Order of the Thistle. He is married to Morag Ann, whom he met while they were students at the University of St Andrews, and they have two children.
Keith Michael Patrick O'Brien was a senior-ranking Catholic prelate in Scotland. He was the Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh from 1985 to 2013.
As of the 2022 census, None was the largest category of belief in Scotland, chosen by 51.1% of the Scottish population identifying when asked: "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?" This represented an increase from the 2011 figure of 36.7%. 38.8% identified as Christian with most of them declaring affiliation with the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church. The only other religious persuasions with more than 1% affiliation were 'Other Christian' and Muslim at 5.1% and 2.2% of the total population, respectively.
The Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle is a suffragan Latin Church diocese of the Archdiocese of Sydney, established in 1847 initially as the Diocese of Maitland and changed to the current name in 1995. The diocese covers the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions of New South Wales in Australia. The bishop of the diocese is Michael Kennedy.
HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland was established in 1981, following recommendations of the May Committee report of 1979. The Inspectorate is directly funded by the Scottish Government.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
Filippo "Philip" Tartaglia was a Scottish prelate who served as a bishop of the Catholic Church. He served as Metropolitan Archbishop of Glasgow from 2012 until 2021. He previously served as Bishop of Paisley. Prior to his appointment as bishop, he was a professor at seminaries, as well as an assistant pastor and parish priest in the Archdiocese of Glasgow.
The Presbytery of Glasgow is one of the 14 Presbyteries of the Church of Scotland. It dates back to the earliest periods of Presbyterian church government in the Church of Scotland in the late 16th century. The Presbytery of Glasgow currently has 125 congregations, making it by far the largest Presbytery in the Church of Scotland.
Ignatius Anthony Catanello was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. From 1994 to 2010 he served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn.
From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.
Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. This article summarises reported cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy and representatives of the Catholic Church by country and diocese.
Éamonn Oliver Walsh is an Irish former Roman Catholic prelate who served as auxiliary bishop of Dublin between 1990 and 2019.
James Leslie Weatherhead was a minister of the Church of Scotland and the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 1993–1994.
Stephen Robson is the retired bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dunkeld. From 2012 to 2014 he was auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
The McLellan Commission, chaired by Andrew McLellan, with a remit to review safeguarding policy, procedure and practice within the Catholic Church in Scotland, and to make recommendations for improvement, was announced by the Bishops' Conference of Scotland in November 2013. It published its report, "A Review of the Current Safeguarding Policies, Procedures and Practice within the Catholic Church in Scotland", known as the McLellan Report, on 18 August 2015. The commission investigated child sex abuse by Scotland's priests and religious, and the Church's responses. Section 2.1 of the Report acknowledged that "There is no doubt that abuse of the most serious kind has taken place within the Catholic Church in Scotland".
The Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus, also known as the Comboni Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, or the Verona Fathers, and originally called the Sons of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is a Catholic clerical male religious congregation of pontifical right.
Andrew Duncan was a Latin scholar and Church of Scotland minister at Crail. He achieved notoriety for his presbyterian principles which brought him into conflict with James VI who wished to impose an episcopalian system. He attended the General Assembly of Aberdeen in 1605 which had been proscribed or prorogued by royal authority and was one of six ministers who were imprisoned and later exiled as a result. He was allowed to return after several years in France but was subsequently banished again following further controversy in failing to comply with the Five Articles of Perth. He died in exile in Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1626.