Switzerland Switzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica in Latin, hence its ISO country codes CH and CHE), is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Central Europe where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy has no country-wide state religion A state religion is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state. Practically, a state without a state religion is called a secular state. The term state church is associated with Christianity, and is sometimes used to denote a specific national branch of Christianity. Closely related to state churches are what sociologists call, though most of the cantons The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848. The most recently created canton is the Canton of Jura, which separated from the Canton of (except for Geneva The Canton of Geneva is the westernmost canton or state of Switzerland, surrounded on almost all sides by France. The official name of this canton in French is République et Canton de Genève. Like some other Swiss cantons this canton calls itself a republic, as part of the Swiss confederation and Neuchâtel Neuchâtel is a canton of western Switzerland. In 2007, its population was 169,782 of which 39,654 (or 23.4%) are foreigners. The capital is Neuchâtel) recognize official churches (Landeskirchen In Germany and Switzerland, a Landeskirche is the church of a region. They originated as the national churches of the independent states, States of Germany (Länder) or Cantons of Switzerland (Kantone, Cantons), that later unified to form modern Germany (in 1871) or modern Switzerland (in 1848), respectively), in all cases including the Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church,[note 1] is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians[note 2] and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Church, and 22 autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches (called and the Swiss Reformed Church The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Berne (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), St. Gall (Joachim Vadian), to cities in southern Germany and via Alsace (Martin Bucer) to France. These churches, and in some cantons also the Old Catholic Church The Old Catholic Church is a Christian denomination originating with mainly German-speaking groups that split from the Holy See in the 1870s because they disagreed with the solemn declaration of the doctrine of papal infallibility promulgated by the First Vatican Council . The Old Catholic Church holds close to ideas of ecclesiastical liberalism ( and Jewish congregations, are financed by official taxation of adherents.[1]
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