The Catholic Counter-Reformation was a religious movement that arose after the Protestant Reformation had split Western Christendom between Catholics and Protestants.
The movement was begun by Pope Paul III in the 1530s, in response to the challenge of the Reformation. Nevertheless, the Catholic Counter-Reformation became a reform movement in itself. As a result, the moral stature, organization, and power of the Catholic Church was drastically altered. The Catholic reformers made many changes to the Church that ensured that Protestantism would not dominate the European Continent.