Catholic Church in Austria in the context of Archbishop of Salzburg

Religion in Austria is predominantly Christianity, adhered to by 68.2% of the country's population according to the 2021 national survey conducted by Statistics Austria. Among Christians, 80.9% were Catholics, 7.2% were Orthodox Christians (mostly belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Church), 5.6% were Protestants, while the remaining 6.2% were other Christians, belonging to other denominations of the religion or not affiliated to any denomination. In the same census, 8.3% of the Austrians declared that their religion was Islam, 1.2% declared to believe in other non-Christian religions (including Buddhism, Hindusim, Judaism and others), and 22.4% declared they did not belong to any religion, denomination or religious community.

The Fatherland Front (Austrian German: Vaterländische Front, VF) was the right-wing conservative, authoritarian, nationalist, corporatist, and Catholic ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions. Established on 20 May 1933 by Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as the only legally permitted party in the country, it was aligned with the Catholic Church, and did not advocate any racial ideology. It advocated Austrian nationalism and independence from Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state.

The Fatherland Front, which was strongly linked with Austria's Catholic clergy, absorbed Dollfuss's Christian Social Party, the agrarian Landbund and the right-wing paramilitary Heimwehren, all of which were opposed to Nazism, Marxism, laissez-faire capitalism and liberal democracy. It established an authoritarian and corporatist regime, the Federal State of Austria, which is commonly known in German as the Ständestaat ("corporate state"). According to the Fatherland Front this form of government and society implemented the social teaching of Pope Pius XI's 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo anno. The Front banned and persecuted all its political opponents, including Communists, Social Democrats—who fought against it in a brief civil war in February 1934—as well as the Austrian Nazis who wanted Austria to join Germany. Chancellor Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazis in July 1934. He was succeeded as leader of the VF and Chancellor of Austria by Kurt Schuschnigg, who ruled until the invigorated Nazis forced him to resign on 11 March 1938. Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany the next day.

Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Schönborn, OP (German: [ˈkrɪstɔf ˈʃøːnbɔrn]; born 22 January 1945) is a Bohemian-born Austrian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Vienna from 1995 until 2025. He was chairman of the Austrian Bishops' Conference from 1998 to 2020 and was made a cardinal in 1998. He is a member of the Dominican Order.

Schönborn is Grand Chaplain of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Austrian branch), of which he has been a member since 1961. He is also a member of the formerly sovereign House of Schönborn, several members of which held high offices of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church as prince-bishops, prince-electors and cardinals.

Josephus Franciscus Mohr, sometimes spelled Josef (11 December 1792 – 4 December 1848), was an Austrian Catholic priest and writer who wrote the words to the Christmas carol "Silent Night."