Christianity is the main religion in Belarus, with Eastern Orthodoxy being the largest denomination. The legacy of the state atheism of the Soviet era is evident in the fact that a part of the Belarusians (especially in the east part of the country) are not religious. Moreover, other non-traditional and new religions have sprung up in the country after the end of the Soviet Union. According to the estimations for 2011 by the Ministry of the Interior, 73.3% of the Belarusians are Orthodox Christians, 14.8% are irreligious (atheists and agnostics), 9.7% are Catholic Christians (either Roman Catholic and Belarusian Greek Catholic), and 3.5% are members of other religions (mostly pentecostals). History By the end of the 12th century, Europe was generally divided into two large areas: Western Europe with dominance of Catholicism, and Eastern Europe with Orthodox and Byzantine influences. The border between them was roughly marked by the Bug River. This placed the area now known as Belarus in a unique position where these two influences mixed and interfered. Before the 14th century, the Orthodox church was dominant in Belarus. The Union of Krewo in 1385 broke this monopoly and made Catholicism the religion of the ruling class. Jogaila, then ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, ordered the whole population of Lithuania to convert to Catholicism. 1.5 years after the Union of Krewo, the Wilno episcopate was created which received a lot of land from the Lithuanian dukes. By the mid-16th century Catholicism became strong in Lithuania and bordering with it north-west parts of Belarus, but the Orthodox church was still dominant in Belarus. In the 16th century, a crisis began in Christianity: the Protestant Reformation began in Catholicism and a period of heresy began in an Orthodox area. From the mid-16th century Protestant ideas began spreading in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The first Protestant Church in Belarus was created in Brest by Mikołaj "the Black" Radziwiłł. Protestantism did not survive due to the Counter-Reformation in Poland. Religion in post-Soviet Belarus The revival of religion in Belarus in the post-communist era brought about a revival of the old historical conflict between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. This religious complexity was compounded by the two denominations' links to institutions outside the republic. The Belarusian Orthodox Church was headed by an ethnic Russian, Metropolitan Filaret, who headed an exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Catholic archdiocese