few conversions took place. The several Roman Catholic missions established in Algeria were concerned with charitable and relief work; the establishment of schools, workshops, and infirmaries; and the training of staff for the new establishments. Some of the missionaries of these organizations remained in the country after independence, working among the poorer segments of the population. In the early 1980s, the Roman Catholic population numbered about 45,000, most of whom were foreigners (usually ethnic French) or Algerians who had married French or Italians. In addition, there was a Protestant community. Because the government adopted a policy of not inquiring about religious affiliation in censuses or surveys to avoid provoking religious tensions, the number of Christians in the early 1990s was not known. Algerian Christians reside mostly in the main cities such as Algiers, Bejaia, Tizi Ouzou, Annaba, and Oran, and the Kabylia region. The government of Algeria has been known to target the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA), closing down dozens of churches in three waves since 2008, putting the churches through rigorous processes before allowing then to re-open. This activity included eighteen churches closed between November, 2017 and October, 2019. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom included Algeria in its 2020 report of the world's most severe religious freedom violators for a number of discriminatory actions, including the fact that, as of the report, 12 EPA churches had not yet been given permission to re-open. The Baháʼí Faith in Algeria dates from 1952. Though the religion achieved some growth and organization through 1967 including converts, the period of the independence of Algeria when the country adopted Islamic practices in rejection of colonial influences and subsequently the religion was effectively banned in 1968. However, by 2010, the Association of Religion Data Archives estimated the population of Baháʼís in Algeria at 3,300 followers. The Jewish community of Algeria is of considerable antiquity, with some members claiming descent from immigrants from Palestine at the time of the Romans. The majority are descendants of refugees from Spanish persecution early in the fifteenth century. They numbered about 140,000 before the Algerian War, but at independence in 1962 nearly all of them left the country. Because the 1870 Crémieux Decrees, which aimed at assimilating the colonists of Algeria to France, gave Jews full French citizenship, most members of the Jewish community emigrated to France. The small remaining Jewish population appeared to have stabilized