🌎 ⛪ 80% of Latin Americans were Catholic just 30 years ago. Today, it's barely half. Here's what's happening ↓

Just over two months ago, the first Latin American pope – Pope Francis, from Argentina – passed away on Easter Monday. His death began the process to find the new head of the Vatican, the sovereign institution at the head of the Catholic Church.

His replacement, Pope Leo XIV, is not only the first pope to come from the United States (he’s a White Sox fan from Chicago), but by virtue of his 2015 naturalization the first pope to come from Peru as well. That was obviously cause for excitement for Peruvian Catholics, which make up roughly three-quarters of their country’s population.

Interestingly, despite Brazil being home to more Catholics than anywhere else in the world, no Brazilian cardinals were deemed frontrunners to succeed Francis. This comes as Catholicism declines in Brazil, while Evangelical Protestantism rises—a trend we see in much of Latin America, in fact.

While 80% of surveyed Latin Americans were Catholics 30 years ago, that number has since fallen to just over half. Catholicism, brought over by Spanish and Portuguese colonists as well as later immigrants from countries like Italy and Croatia, has seen its regional dominance erode in the face of growing numbers of Evangelicals.

While in 1995 only about one in twenty Latin Americans were Evangelical, today that figure has risen to roughly 25%. Evangelicals have become a major political force in countries like Brazil, where their growing numbers have translated to an increasingly conservative national legislature.

Central America is without a doubt the Evangelical stronghold, as the faith makes up at least a third of the population of each country in the subregion. A whopping 56% of Costa Ricans, for example, are Evangelical—and the rise has been dramatic, growing from just 14% less than a decade ago.

What does the religious mix look like for all countries?

[story continues… 💌]

Source: Wikipedia, Latinobarometro

Tools: Figma, Rawgraphs

Posted by latinometrics

27 comments

  1. horrible.however many times you cut off the ugly head of religious extremism, it always grows back

  2. I assume this uses the non-American meaning of Evangelical i.e. Lutheran, or extends it to protestantism in general?

  4. What’s with Argentina’s dip and slight resurgence recently?

  5. To be fair, in some of those countries(specially nicaragua) they are being hunted to death.

    Uruguay being the weirdest one, since as far as I know its full of rich people and there is no persecution whatsoever. So probably related to wealth.

  6. Many Evangelical churches over the last 25 years have really amped up efforts in the Caribbean and Latin America, building churches, schools, facilities, etc while preaching to the impoverished. This goes for all main Protestant/Evangelical denominations as well as Mormons (which is also growing alot down there).

    As far as I know, Catholicism is an old institution that is not really reaching out to the poor like these American missionaries are, and thus we see a lot of growth from those efforts over a longer time period.

  7. It’s terrible, the Catholics aren’t great but at least they aren’t extremists. Evangelicals are trying to make Latin America into something similar to the southern US, they want religious nationalism and to abolish rights “based” on the bible, such as abortion and same sex marriage. They take advantage of people in horrible situations and manipulate them into converting.

  8. Are there nearly 0 mainline Protestants, or is this calling all non-Catholics ‘evangelical’? 

  9. Evangelical churches fill some gaps both the government and the Catholic church fail to fill. That’s why they have gained traction among unprivileged people such as indigenous people, people with disabilities, etc. You should see the efforts they have made to have content in indigenous and sign languages, for instance. Not saying it’s a good thing, but it is a thing.

  10. To be honest, I’m not surprised. Many of those “Catholics” were only Catholic because their grandparents were Catholic

  11. Bro, I didn1t knew Uruguay had so many atheists. LETS GO!!!!

  12. The colors don’t match the legend and the bottom six use a different color scheme entirely. Why!? This is not an effective visualization.

  13. I wonder how it looks like for the Philippines. I know we’re not Latin but I feel like we’re cousins, considering we were a Spanish colony for 333 years and our names are still largely Spanish-influenced.

  14. For some reason this makes it look like only Uruguay has atheists. Utter nonsense, god damn it!

  15. This is going to keep catching up with 1st world countries. The more knowledge you have access to, the more blatantly ridiculous religion is.

    Then eventually it will have a shift again as people have start prioritizing idiocy and ignorance before you know it you have a fuckwit in the leaders house who has never read your holy text or been to a sermon illegally starting a war with another country on the flawed basis that their favorite book says themselves and their religious radical constituents must protect the “holy land” at all costs. Nobody else in the country will respond to this in any way because rules and laws are just for poor people to keep them from getting uppity towards the rich people who actually matter.

  16. The colors in your legend don’t correspond with the colors in the graphs, it’s very confusing.

  17. Mexico only 69% Catholic? I’m very surprised.

  18. The time frame on the X-axis is completely illegible. It would have been better to have just 2 or 3 legible time stamps instead of what looks to be about 10 – 20 completely illegible ones.

    At the very least, I’d like to know how far back you’re looking and how recent the most recent results are.

    I had to glean from your post that the earliest data here appears to be 1995, since you referenced “30 years ago”, but it shouldn’t be that difficult to get this information.

  20. I’m from one of those Central American countries you all need to get your evangelical and Mormon converters out. It’s hard enough dealing with the Catholics but it’s an enemy you know, these American churches are all a worst more blatant grift.

  21. “Catholicism is in decline.”
    YAY!
    “But it’s being replaced by evangelism.”
    FUCK.

  22. If Evangelicals ever becomes the majority over there, then Good luck Latin America because you’ll definitely need that 😅

  23. Just what the world needs, more evangelicals pushing their cosmic snake oil.

  24. the evangelical movement in Latin America is a nothing but a right-wing political movement disguised as religion.

  26. As much as I dislike catholicism in general (well, organized religion and particularly abrahamic ones), evangelist are a freaking cancer. They provide nothing of value ethically financially nor infrastructure wise. Their “churches” are glorified warehouses, their “faith” intolerant andpushy af, and their model cultist in their “collection”…. Obviously not everyone and everything is the same but hell if statistics don’t put them far above the average when it comes to undesirability

  27. Evangelicals are extremely outspoken about hurting those in need and pushing those views while absolutely fleecing the hell out of their sheep and the people tend to be so blind to it happening to them

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