Church of Ireland

Church of Ireland
Modern logo of the Church of Ireland
Primate	Alan Harper
Headquarters	See House, Cathedral Close, Armagh, BT61 7EE, Northern Ireland
Territory	Ireland
Members	365,000
Website	www.ireland.anglican.org
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The Church of Ireland (Irish: Eaglais na hÉireann) is a Protestant church, an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion, operating across the island of Ireland, and the largest non-Roman Catholic religious body on the island. Like other Episcopal churches, it considers itself to be both Catholic, in that its beliefs and practices are based on a continuous tradition dating back to the early Church, and Reformed, in that it does not accept the universal jurisdiction of the Pope.

When the church in England broke communion from the Roman Catholic Church, all but two of the bishops of the Church in Ireland followed the Church of England, although almost no clergy or laity did so. The new body became the State Church, assuming possession of most Church property (and so retaining a great repository of religious architecture and other items, though some were later destroyed). The substantial majority of the population remained strongly Roman Catholic, despite the political and economic advantages of membership in the state church. Despite its numerical minority, however, the Church of Ireland remained the official state church until it was disestablished on 1 January 1871 by the Liberal government under William Ewart Gladstone.

Today the Church of Ireland is, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest denomination in the island of Ireland and the largest Protestant tradition (the second-largest in Northern Ireland after Presbyterianism).