Drift to Protestant Churches accelerates

Catholics will cease to be a majority of the Brazilian population by 2036, according to a recent analysis, carried out by demographer Professor José Eustáquio Diniz Alves, writes Francis McDonagh.

The decline in Catholic numbers was already evident, especially between 1991 and 2010, when there was a decline of 18.4 per cent. Of Catholics who leave the Church, 72 per cent join Protestant Churches, 18 per cent identify as non-believers and 10 per cent join non-Christian religions.

Professor Diniz Alves says that there is evidence for an increased rate of decline in two of Brazil’s most populous states, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In the state of Rio, in the city of Seropédica, while 55 per cent of the population identified as Catholic in the 1991 census and 21 per cent as Protestant, by 2010 the proportion of Catholics had fallen to 27.4 per cent while Protestants were 44 per cent.

In the industrial area around the city of São Paulo known as the ABC Region, a survey found that the proportion of Catholics had fallen from 90.7 per cent in 1960 to 56.5 per cent in 2010 and 46.8 per cent in 2016.