There are almost 4.1 million Orthodox Christians in Bulgaria, according to data of the National Statistical Institute.

"The persons who self-identified as Christians are 4,219,270, or 71.5% of those who answered the question.

Eastern Orthodox Christians predominate among them - 4,091,780, or 97.0% of those who indicated Christian religion, followed by persons with Protestant religion - 69,852 (1.7%), Catholic - 38,709 (0.9%), and 5,002 (0.1%) indicated Armenian apostolic creed. The answer ‘other Christian’ was chosen by 13,927, or 0.3% of those who answered the question", reports NSI.

Religion is the person's belonging to a given group, distinguished historically and characterized by the performance of certain religious rites - Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and others.

638,708 persons, or 10.8%, indicated Muslim religion, 1,736 Jews, and 6,451 persons professed other religions.

As of September 7, 2021, 305,102 (5.2%) individuals responded that they did not have a religion, 259,235 (4.4%) had difficulty identifying their religion, and 472,606 (8.0%) indicated that they did not wish to answer.

The age distribution of the persons who self-identified to the various religions shows that the highest relative share of adults (65+ years) is among the persons professing the Jewish religion - 28.6%, and the lowest - among those who indicated "other" (7.0% ). Similar to the distribution by ethnicity, where the highest share of persons under the age of 14 is in the "cannot determine" category - 43.7% of those who indicated this answer.

Among the persons who identified themselves as belonging to the Bulgarian ethnic group, 3,980,131 people, or 79.9%, are Eastern Orthodox, 33,749 (0.7%) - Catholic, 34,152 (0.7%) - Protestant, and 107,777 (2.2%) ) - with Muslim religion. 245,845 (4.9%) persons indicated the answer "I don't have one", and "I cannot determine" - 190,807, or 3.8% of those who self-identified to the Bulgarian ethnic group.

For 447,893 people (89.1%) of the self-identified Turkish ethnic group, the stated religion was Muslim, 4,435 (0.9%) chose the Eastern Orthodox religion, 13,195 (2.6%) of this ethnic group indicated that they had no religion, 15,622 (3.1%) were unable to self-determine.

Among those self-identified as belonging to the Roma ethnic group, those with the Eastern Orthodox religion predominate - 75,745, or 29.1%. The Muslim religion is indicated by 45,817 (17.6%) of the Roma, Protestant - by 32,325 (12.4%), "I do not have" a religion was marked by 37,232 (14.3%) and "cannot determine" - by 41,517 (15.9%) of self-identified to the Roma ethnic group. The highest share of persons who declared that they do not wish to indicate their religion is among the Roma ethnic group - 9.1%, and the lowest - among persons who self-identified as belonging to the Turkish ethnic group (4.0%).

In terms of territory, the share of self-identified Christians is highest in the regions of Kyustendil (88.5%), Vidin (86.9%), Pernik (86.6%) and Sofia (83.4%), and the lowest - in the regions of Kardzhali (15.6%), Smolyan (24.2%) and Razgrad (35.8%).

The persons who self-identified as Muslim are mainly concentrated in the districts of Kardzhali (69.6%), Razgrad (55.0%), Targovishte (43.7%), Smolyan (41.1%), Silistra (39.1%) and Shumen (34.3%). This share is the lowest in the districts of Vidin, Montana, Pernik and Kyustendil - 0.1% of those who answered the question.

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/NSI