Catholic Dominance in a Former British Colony: Saint Lucia

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The constitution guarantees freedom of religion and conscience and establishes no state church, in keeping with the pattern across the former British Windward Islands, though the Catholic Church's historical dominance has given it a civic prominence, particularly in education, that Protestant churches elsewhere in the region more often hold instead. The government covers approximately half the operating cost of the constitution's "assisted" church-run schools, though the subsidy does not extend to religious instruction classes themselves; of the schools operating in the late 1990s, 64 primary and two secondary schools were church run, most under the Catholic Board of Education.

The Criminal Code's public worship offense provisions punish riotous or insulting behavior at a place of worship and disturbing a minister during a service, and a separate provision excludes blasphemous matter from the exemptions otherwise available under the defamation law, though neither is actively enforced. Saint Lucia has never concluded a concordat with the Holy See, its nunciature shared, as with several Eastern Caribbean neighbors, with the prelate serving Trinidad and Tobago.