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"The Constituent Assembly (5 May 1789-30 September 1791) rejected the motion of the Abbé d'Eymar declaring the Catholic religion to be the religion of the State, but it did not thereby mean to place the Catholic religion on the same level as other religions.
Prior to the French Revolution, the Catholic Church had been the official state religion of France since the conversion to Christianity of Clovis I, leading to France being called "the eldest daughter of the Church".
Roman Catholicism was the state religion of France beginning with the conversion of King Clovis I (d. 511) until the French Revolution, when the Church’s relationship with the state was radically redefined.
In 1789, the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution, Catholicism was the official religion of the French state. The French Catholic Church, known as the Gallican Church, recognised the authority of the pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church but had negotiated certain liberties that privileged the authority of the French monarch ...
Religion of France. Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France, completed mid-13th century. About three-fifths of the French people belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Only a minority, however, regularly participate in religious worship; practice is greatest among the middle classes.
The new concordat governed church-state relations until 1905. It did not recognize Catholicism as the state religion but as the religion of the majority of the French people. It permitted the government to name the bishops, who were then canonically instituted by the pope. Bishops in turn were given the right to select pastors and curates.
Catholicism is the most prominent denomination in France, but has long lost the state religion status it held prior to the 1789 French Revolution and during various non-republican regimes of the 19th century, including the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Second French Empire.
