The challenge of being Catholic in the world’s largest Muslim country

Indonesia stays somewhat under the international radar, considering it has the world’s fourth-largest population and the largest of any Muslim-majority nation. About 87% of its people adhere to Islam (over 240 million), but one-tenth of all Indonesians are Christian, and roughly one-third of these Christians are Catholic (about 3% of the entire population).

Though often touted as a place that successfully maintains religious diversity, Indonesia is no stranger to lethal outbreaks of Islamic extremism. And in much of the country, there is significant opposition to anyone seeking to build a new church.

Even in locations that are not completely opposed to a new church, Indonesian Christians have claimed they must bribe not only local officials but also local residents to prevent them from sabotaging the construction in some way.

Despite these realities, Indonesia has a history and tradition of accepting other religions. Indeed, some of its national heroes were Catholics. Among them was Indonesia’s first native-born Catholic bishop, Albertus Soegijapranata (1896-1963), a Muslim-born convert to Catholicism. He became a prominent Indonesian nationalist who lived by the motto “100 percent Catholic, 100 percent Indonesian.”

Catholicism came to the region in the 1530s by way of the Portuguese, who colonized Indonesia from the early 16th to the early 17th century. St. Francis Xavier, who visited the region in the 1540s, also made a significant impact.

Many early Indonesian Catholics were forcibly converted to Islam. Other Indonesian Catholics were forcibly converted to Protestantism following the Dutch arrival in Indonesia in the early 17th century. (For almost three and a half centuries, the Dutch were Indonesia’s colonial master.)

Fr. Markus*, an Indonesian Catholic priest, says he is not aware of any current conflicts between Catholics and other Christian groups within Indonesia. Still, he says it is preferable that Catholics marry other Catholics and that “a religiously mixed marriage causes more social problems.” This viewpoint is not rare in Indonesia, where interfaith marriages face many hurdles. However, for Catholics who wish to marry non-Catholics, “we could submit a dispensation,” he adds.

Though interfaith marriage remains a difficult challenge, Indonesian authorities, at least those on a national level, promote programs fostering inter-religious dialogue and unity.

Not everyone is a receptive listener, of course. And many non-Christian Indonesians suspect that churches and church programs are part of a plot to convert the public to Christianity, which saw a strong rise in popularity in the country during the second half of the 20th century. Some of Indonesia’s non-Christian population found this trajectory offensive enough to react with violence.

Beginning around the turn of the new millennium, Indonesia saw an uptick in various types of fatal attacks carried out against Christians. That period coincided with the country’s dramatic political shift from an authoritarian state to a democracy. Though Indonesian people benefited in general from this change, the increased freedoms also opened an avenue for extremist groups, including ones influenced by countries in the Middle East.

And as the new post-authoritarian era saw federal control quickly decline, regional politics became much more important. Some regions with a stronger extremist presence began to support local politicians who would reflect those values.

Indonesia has 38 provinces, a few of which have very high Christian populations. But in many other provinces, Christians are a very small minority. And in some of those provinces, their safety can seem dubious or be tenuous.

Indonesia’s former president, Joko Widodo, disbanded two large-scale Islamic extremist groups during his tenure, which ended in late 2024. But Fr. Markus still wonders what extremist activities are now taking place underground.

Some international observers believe the country has made solid recent gains in religious freedom. For example, the Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors did not include Indonesia on its most recent World Watch Top 50 list of countries that are most oppressive to Christians. This is a noteworthy omission when considering that, just three years ago, Indonesia ranked as high as 28 on the list.

Though such a trajectory suggests a significant level of improvement, Fr. Markus is not convinced. “It’s only on the surface,” he says, apparently reluctant to go into further detail.

There is a potentially complicating factor on the horizon that could impact all religious minorities in the country. A law passed in December 2022 and set to take effect in 2026 will broaden preexisting regulations on blasphemy in Indonesia.

This issue, for now at least, is somewhat outside the radar of most Indonesians, regardless of their religious background. And it is yet uncertain how conducive this new law will be for extremists seeking to weaponise accusations of blasphemy, as is done so effectively in places such as Pakistan.

Many feel that Indonesia, which has no state religion, makes a legitimate effort at fostering coexistence in a religiously diverse society. But this ideal seems fragile when considering the country’s track record of religiously-motivated violence and the fact that the larger part of its religious majority would prefer to live under Shari’a law.

However severe the real level of persecution, the Church in Indonesia is facing other issues. There are signs of secularization and decline of faith among Indonesian Catholics, as seen in so much of the West, says Fr. Markus. “And I have traced this trend in the younger generation,” he notes, before adding that the number of seminarians has decreased in recent years, “especially from the big cities.”

Despite the seminarian decline, the majority of priests in Indonesia are native-born Indonesians, although there are some older missionaries from Germany, the Netherlands, and a few other European countries.

In the view of Fr. Markus, the most pressing issue facing the Church in Indonesia is, “How can we be ‘indigenous,’ and not as a strange element, alien in the Indonesian society?”’ He suspects one obstacle is “the stigma we have as a religion that came from colonialist countries.”

Making Catholicism feel more ‘indigenous’ is a goal that could take many years, even if the extremists are somehow kept in check.

(*Name changed to preserve anonymity.)