France is historically Catholic, and Catholics remain the largest single religious group at roughly 25 to 30 percent of the population by self-identification, though religiously unaffiliated French residents now form a plurality at around 40 percent, alongside Europe's largest Muslim population by absolute numbers at roughly 8 to 10 percent, and smaller Protestant, Jewish and Buddhist communities, per estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020. France was long called the eldest daughter of the Church following the baptism of the Frankish king Clovis around 496 CE, and Catholic institutions dominated French religious, educational and political life for over a millennium, interrupted sharply by the French Revolution's dechristianization campaigns of the 1790s, which closed churches, executed clergy and briefly imposed a rival Cult of Reason.
French Protestants, the Huguenots, suffered severe persecution culminating in the 1572 St Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had granted them limited toleration, driving mass Huguenot emigration. France's Jewish community, the largest in Western Europe, and its Muslim population, largely descended from twentieth-century immigration from former French colonies in North and West Africa, are now central to ongoing debates over the country's secular model.