Not even the first Latin American pope in history stopped the bleeding of Catholic faithful in Latin America. Every year, the region sees a decline in the number of those who say they are linked to the Catholic Church. If in 1995 they were 80%, now they are 56%, according to research data from the Latinobarómetro Institute.
The phenomenon is not the only one that draws attention. In the same period, there was a jump in those who declared themselves to be evangelicals —from 3.5% to 19.7%—, a movement largely driven by Brazil, and a boom in those who said they had no religion. Before, they were less than 5% of the Latin American population; now, it’s almost 16%.
Historian Andrew Chesnut, professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, describes the scenario as a pluralization of the religious field. “Each day, faith is chosen more and less is inherited from the family; it is a free market, in which the person chooses among the options that seem most adequate and that respond to his spiritual and material needs”, he says.
The movement is not homogeneous. Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia, for example, stand out for the increase in evangelicals, a scenario similar to that observed throughout Central America. Chile, in turn, is distinguished by the growth of the non-religious. Mexico, on the other hand, remains a bastion of Catholicism.
Evangelicals are a key factor
Rodrigo Toniol, president of the Mercosur Association of Social Scientists of Religion, disagrees with the hypothesis that the reflux of Catholicism is due to the loss of strength of the church as an institution. According to him, Brazil is experiencing the peak of the number of priests and parishes, and the rate of decline is that of the faithful.
He works with the thesis that the increase in the strength of the church was accompanied by the “discipline of everyday Catholic practices”. “When you start to regulate everyday practices, such as what kind of saint can and cannot, for example, which in the end was what sustained Catholicism, it loses strength. It is as if the crisis of Catholicism was a victim of the the Church’s own institutional success.”
The factors do not end there, and the fastest growing religious group in the region is of crucial importance: evangelicals. Chesnut says the Catholic Church has remained largely Eurocentric and, “in contrast, Pentecostals have ‘Latin Americanized,'” citing the strength of music and TV in evangelical circles.
“Faith marketing is very important, because we are in a capitalist society, and Pentecostals are talented at that, something that Catholics, with bureaucratic priests, lagged behind.”
The Boom of the No-Religion
The number of those who say they have no religion is the third largest group in Latin America. If Catholicism is what Toniol calls a “universal donor”, for transferring believers to other religions, the scenario is different for other flows, such as from evangelicals to religions of African origin, considered rarer.
The scenario, therefore, favors transitions to the group of those without religion, which has grown continuously, especially since the second half of the last decade. Chile is perhaps the main example. From a country with a strong Catholic tradition, more than a third of its population has declared themselves to be without religion, a movement that has gained notable weight after the recent scandals of sexual abuse of minors.
the mexican case
Outside the curve, Mexico, the scene of greater institutionalization of the church due to the marked importance of Catholicism at the time of colonization, has 72.1% of Christians, a drop of five percentage points compared to 1995. Another factor is the Virgin of Guadalupe , part of the Mexican identity.
“He is one of the most important figures in the world in terms of the number of believers and devotees, and he acts as a barrier to the growth of evangelicals,” says Chesnut of Virginia Commonwealth University. “To stop being a devotee of Guadalupe is like leaving a part of the Mexican national identity.”
Secularization overseas
On the other side of the Atlantic, something similar: Spain saw the greatest loss of religiosity during the coronavirus pandemic, now having 37% of atheists and agnostics. The figure is from a recent report by the Ferrer Guardia Foundation. In 2019, 27.5% said they had no religion.
The change in profile does not correspond to the space that the Catholic Church maintains. “Spain is a secular state according to the Constitution, but it continues with the Vatican accords of 1979, made shortly after the dictatorship, which tied up all the privileges of the Catholic Church that are maintained until today”, says Hungary Panadero, co-author of the material. A part of the Spanish income tax goes to the church, for example.
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