The Roman Catholic Church in Kazakhstan is part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and Curia in Rome.

There are approximately 100,000 Catholics ^{[citation needed]} in Kazakhstan, less than 1% of the total population. The country is divided into three dioceses including one archdiocese. In addition there is an Apostolic Administration.

In the second century AD, Christian Roman prisoners of war were taken to what is now Kazakhstan after their defeat by the Sassanid Persians.^[1]

In 1307, Pope Clement V sent seven friars having the rank of bishop, who were to consecrate John of Montecorvino as "Archbishop of Cambaluc and Primate of the Far East"; only Andrew of Perugia, Gerard, and Peregrinus reached China in 1308 and consecrated John of Montecorvino; a Bishopric was erected at Zaitun in Fujian, which was occupied in turn by Gerard (d. 1313), Peregrinus (d. 1322), and Andrew of Perugia; John of Montecorvino died in 1333 and was succeeded by Nicholas, a theologian from Paris, who arrived in China with twenty-six friars and six lay brothers. A mission was also created at Ili-baluc in Central Asia with Richard of Burgundy as its bishop, but it was later destroyed. (Catholic Encyclopedia)

A Vatican source has basically the same information, but the name of the Bishop is slightly different: The Catholic community here (in Kazakhstan) existed as early as 1300 when a diocese was entrusted to the care of Franciscan friar Henry of Bourgogne, who was later martyred with the entire Catholic community. The see of the "Ili-baluc" diocese was in Almaliq, (later known as Kuldja, present-day Yining) in the upper part of the Ili valley, and today in Western China. Later, from 1888 until 1922, the Catholic Mission in today's Xinjiang in China ("Eastern Turkestan" / "Chinese Turkestan") was called the I-li Mission. It also had Kuldja/Yining at its centre.

After the communist take over the country, there was no religious freedom. In 1978, the government began to relax its anti-religious rules and faithful began to re-emerge. With the fall of communism in 1991, the Catholic community fully came back out into the open.^[2] In 1991, Pope John Paul II established an Apostolic Administration that covered all of Central Asia.^[3] In 1997, the other four countries of the region, Krgystan, Tajikistan, Turmenistan, and Uzbekistan all became independent missions, so the Apostolic Administration became for all of Kazakhstan and was based in Karaganda.^[3] In 1999, the apostolic administration was split in four; three new apostolic administrations were created, based in Almaty, Astana, and Atyrau, and a diocese was created in Karaganda.^[3]

• Giga-Catholic Information on the Church in Kazakhstan