(ZENIT News / Mexico City, 03.05.2026).- For centuries, Latin America has been considered the global stronghold of Catholicism. From Mexico to the southern tip of the continent, Catholic culture shaped national identities, social life, and political debates. Even today, nearly half of the world’s Catholics live in the Americas. Yet recent data suggest that the region long viewed as the Church’s demographic anchor is undergoing a profound transformation.
Statistics from the Vatican’s annual Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae indicate that 47.8 percent of the world’s Catholics reside in the Americas, with Latin America alone accounting for about 40 percent of the global Catholic population. Those figures, however, are based on baptismal records, meaning they include anyone baptized in the Church regardless of whether they still identify as Catholic.
A closer look at religious self-identification reveals a markedly different reality. A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center examined religious affiliation between 2013 and 2024 in six major Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru—years that coincide with the pontificate of Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope in history. The findings show a steady and sometimes dramatic decline in the percentage of people who describe themselves as Catholic.
In Colombia, where Catholic devotion has long been woven into the country’s cultural fabric, the share of Catholics dropped from 79 percent in 2013 to 60 percent in 2024, a fall of 19 percentage points. Chile recorded a similar decline, dropping from 64 percent to 46 percent over the same period, an 18-point decrease.
Brazil, the world’s most populous Catholic country in absolute numbers, experienced a reduction from 61 percent to 46 percent, a loss of 15 points. Mexico, historically one of the Church’s most symbolically important nations, saw the Catholic share fall from 81 percent to 67 percent, while Argentina—the homeland of Pope Francis—declined from 71 percent to 58 percent. Peru registered the smallest drop among the six countries studied, yet even there the percentage fell from 76 percent to 67 percent.
These figures contrast sharply with baptismal data. According to the Vatican’s statistical yearbook, 94 percent of Argentines, 93 percent of Colombians, 91 percent of Mexicans, 89 percent of Peruvians, 84 percent of Brazilians, and 74 percent of Chileans are technically counted as Catholics because they were baptized. The widening gap between sacramental identity and personal religious affiliation is therefore becoming one of the defining features of the region’s evolving religious landscape.
Contrary to what might be expected, the principal destination for former Catholics is not Protestantism. Although evangelical and Pentecostal churches continue to expand, their growth during the period studied has been relatively modest in most countries.
By 2024, Protestants represented about 29 percent of the population in Brazil, 19 percent in Chile, 18 percent in Peru, 16 percent in Argentina, 15 percent in Colombia, and 9 percent in Mexico. In Brazil, the increase since 2013 was only around three percentage points, and in other countries the gains were even smaller.
The most dramatic expansion has occurred among the religiously unaffiliated—those who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or simply without religious affiliation. This group has grown rapidly across the region.
In Chile, the proportion of unaffiliated people rose from 16 percent in 2013 to 33 percent in 2024. Argentina saw a similar shift, from 11 percent to 24 percent. In Colombia the number climbed from 6 percent to 23 percent. Mexico moved from 7 percent to 20 percent, Brazil from 8 percent to 15 percent, and Peru from 4 percent to 12 percent.
In many cases, those entering the “no religion” category are former Catholics. In Chile, for example, 19 percent of the population consists of ex-Catholics who now identify as unaffiliated, compared with only 6 percent who became Protestant. Similar patterns appear elsewhere: in Mexico, 15 percent moved into the unaffiliated category while 4 percent converted to Protestantism; in Colombia, 13 percent became unaffiliated and 8 percent Protestant; in Argentina, the figures are 12 percent and 8 percent respectively. Only in Brazil and Peru did conversions to Protestantism slightly exceed the number who became religiously unaffiliated.
Despite these shifts, belief in God remains remarkably strong throughout the region. In all six countries studied, more than 90 percent of the population say they believe in God. The change therefore appears less about secularization in the European sense and more about a weakening connection to organized religious institutions.
Religious practice reflects this pattern. Weekly Mass attendance varies widely across the region: 41 percent of Catholics attend services weekly in Mexico and 40 percent in Colombia. In Brazil the figure is 36 percent, and in Peru 27 percent. In Argentina it drops to 12 percent, and in Chile only 8 percent of Catholics report weekly participation in Mass.
By contrast, participation rates among Protestant communities are significantly higher. In several countries—including Argentina and Chile—weekly attendance in Protestant congregations is five times greater than among Catholics.
Sociologists of religion have sought to explain these trends by pointing to broader cultural shifts. The Uruguayan sociologist Néstor Da Costa argues that many people perceive a departure from institutional religion as a path toward a more personal and less constrained spirituality. This phenomenon encourages some believers to leave churches entirely, while others remain within them but at the margins, maintaining a more individualized approach to faith.
Da Costa describes this pattern as a form of “spiritual individualism.” Many self-identified Catholics, he suggests, now navigate their religious life by selecting elements from different traditions or personal beliefs rather than adhering strictly to institutional doctrine. In his view, perhaps a majority of Latin American Catholics today fall into this loosely affiliated category.
At the same time, Latin America differs from Europe in one crucial respect: the powerful presence of Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal movements. These churches—many of which trace their origins to revivalist currents in the United States in the early twentieth century—have expanded rapidly across the continent.
Traditional Pentecostal groups such as the Assemblies of God have become especially influential in countries like Brazil, where they represent a large portion of the evangelical population. Newer neo-Pentecostal movements, often associated with a “prosperity theology” emphasizing personal success, practical solutions to everyday problems, and emotionally expressive worship, resonate strongly with contemporary cultural expectations.
Historical Protestant denominations—Lutheran, Calvinist, Methodist, and Baptist—have not benefited from the same momentum. According to Da Costa, these communities face many of the same institutional challenges as the Catholic Church, but because they are smaller, the effects are felt even more acutely.
Within Catholicism itself, internal changes have also reshaped the religious landscape. Base communities associated with liberation theology, once influential in parts of Latin America, have largely faded. Some ecclesial movements have also struggled with the repercussions of abuse scandals that damaged institutional credibility.
As a result, Catholic life in the region increasingly appears divided between committed minorities—often associated with more traditional or conservative expressions of faith—and a broad middle group of believers whose religious identity remains fluid and loosely connected to Church structures.
Yet one element remains constant: belief in God continues to be nearly universal. The pastoral challenge facing the Catholic Church in Latin America is therefore not the disappearance of faith, but the erosion of the institutional bonds that once sustained it. For a region that still contains the largest share of Catholics in the world, the question is no longer whether people believe, but how—and where—they choose to live that belief.
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