Funding of religious heritage: the case of Belgium

In Belgium, religion has marked history in a very strong way. For that reason, there are a lot of churches and a lot of religious buildings in the Belgian landscape. For example, during the medieval period, a lot a churches and cathedrals were built and still exist today. Most of the Belgian religious heritage is catholic. In fact, there are 3948 Catholic parishes in Belgium: 2051 in Wallonia, 1809 in Flanders and 88 in Brussels. Furthermore, there are 150 “non-Catholic parishes”. My presentation analyses the complexity of the repartition of competences between various actors, the incidence of being listed as a monument, and the question of the property of churches.