Why has Pentecostalism grown so dramatically in Latin America?
Tens of millions of Latin Americans have left the Roman Catholic Church in recent decades and embraced Pentecostal Christianity.
Latin America is home to more than 425 million Catholics – nearly 40% of the world’s total Catholic population – and the Roman Catholic Church now has a Latin American pope for the first time in its history. Yet identification with Catholicism has declined throughout the region, according to a major new Pew Research Center […]
Nearly 40% of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America, but many people in the region have converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, while some have left organized religion altogether.
Pope Francis, leader of the world’s nearly 1.1 billion Catholics, enjoys broad support across much of the world: a median of 60% across 43 nations have a favorable view of him. Only 11% see the pope unfavorably, and 28% give no rating.
As young Catholics gather in Brazil, awaiting Pope Francis’ visit in celebration of World Youth Day, an analysis of census data finds that the share of Brazil’s population that identifies as Catholic has been dropping steadily in recent decades. Over the same period, the percentage of Brazilians who belong to Protestant churches has been rising.
A country-by-country analysis of data from more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers finds that 84% of adults and children around the globe are religiously affiliated. The study also finds that the median age of two major groups – Muslims (23 years) and Hindus (26) – is younger than the world’s overall population (28), while Jews have the highest median age (36).
A comprehensive demographic study finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world, representing nearly a third of the estimated 2010 global population of 6.9 billion. Christians are also geographically widespread, and no single region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity.
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