Predominantly Roman Catholicism
Significant minorities of Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism (especially Lutheranism) and Judaism
The Polish people, or Poles (Polish: Polacy [pɔˈlat͡sɨ]; singular masculine: Polak, feminine: Polka), are an ethnic group of predominantly West Slavic descent, native to Central Europe, inhabiting mainly Poland, as well as other European and American countries.
The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland defines the Polish nation as comprising all the citizens of Poland. Poland's inhabitants live in the following historic regions of the country: Wielkopolska, Małopolska, Mazovia (Polish: Mazowsze), Silesia (Polish: Śląsk), Pomerania (Polish: Pomorze), Kujawy, Warmia, Mazury, and Podlasie. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Europe (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine), the Americas (the United States, Brazil and Argentina) and Australia. In 1960, Chicago in the United States, had the world's largest urban Polish population after Warsaw. Today, the largest urban concentration of Poles is the Katowice urban agglomeration known as the Silesian Metropolis of 2.7 million inhabitants.
Over a thousand years ago, the Polans of Giecz, Gniezno and Poznań — an influential tribe in Wielkopolska — succeeded in uniting Lechitic tribes under what became the Piast dynasty, thus giving rise to the Polish state.
