Religion in Brazil
religion in the country
The predominant religion in Brazil is Christianity, with Catholicism being its largest denomination.
In 1891, when the first Brazilian Republican Constitution was set forth, Brazil ceased to have an official religion and has remained secular ever since, though the Catholic Church remained politically influential into the 1970s. The constitution of Brazil guarantees freedom of religion and strongly prohibits the establishment of any religion by banning government support or hindrance of religion at all levels.
Overview
Brazil possesses a richly spiritual society formed from the meeting of the Catholic Church with the religious traditions of enslaved Africans and indigenous people. This confluence of faiths during the Portuguese colonization of Brazil led to the development of a diverse array of syncretistic practices within the overarching umbrella of Brazilian Catholicism, characterized by traditional Portuguese festivities. Until recently, Catholicism was overwhelmingly dominant. Changes in the 21st century have led to a growth in secularism (no religious affiliation) and to Evangelical Protestantism. The 2022 census indicates that around 57% of Brazilians consider themselves Catholic, down from 90% in 1970. Despite falling in most of the country, Catholicism remains strong in most of the Northeast. Some analysts have projected Protestants to possibly outnumber Catholics around 2030, with the Catholic Church membership dropping to 38.6%, the Protestant membership in hundreds of independent denominations rising to 39.8%, and the non-Christian population (including the non-affiliated) rising to over 20%.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2746434. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1891, 2022, 1970 and 2030.
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This entry incorporates text from “Religion in Brazil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.