Religion in the Republic of Ireland
Christianity is the largest religion in the Republic of Ireland based on baptisms. Irish Christianity is dominated by the Catholic Church, and Christianity as a whole accounts for 82.3% of the Irish population. Most churches are organized on an all-Ireland basis which includes both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Irish travellers have traditionally adopted a very particular attitude to the Catholic Church, with a focus on figures such as "healing priests". More generally a tradition of visions continues, often outside of Church sanction.
Normans in Ireland
Changing religion, or rather conforming to the State Church, was always an option for any of the King of Ireland's subjects, and an open avenue to inclusion in the officially recognised "body politic", and, indeed, many Old English such as Edmund Burke were newly-conforming Anglicans who retained a certain sympathy and understanding for the difficult position of Roman Catholics, as Burke did in his parliamentary career. Others in the gentry such as the Viscounts Dillon and the Lords Dunsany belonged to Old English families who had originally undergone a religious conversion from Rome to Canterbury to save their lands and titles. Some members of the "Old English" who had thus gained membership in the Irish Ascendancy even became adherents of the cause of Irish independence. Whereas the Old English FitzGerald Dukes of Leinster held the premier title in the Irish House of Lords when it was abolished in 1800, a scion of that Ascendancy family, the Irish nationalist Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was a brother of the second duke.