page_title: Catholic Church in Brazil
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Catholic Church in Brazil / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of proportion of Catholics by Brazilian states. Português: Mapa da proporção de católicos por estado brasileiro.
context_page_description: The Catholic Church in Brazil is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome, and the influential National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, composed of over 400 primary and auxiliary bishops and archbishops. There are over 250 dioceses and other territorial jurisdictions in Brazil. The primate of Brazil is Dom Murilo Ramos Krieger.
  The Catholic Church is the largest denomination in the country, where 123 million people, or 64.6% of the Brazilian population, are self-declared Catholics. These figures make Brazil the single country with the largest Catholic community in the world.
context_section_description: According to a 2007 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, more than 60% of the urban population of Brazil claims a Catholic affiliation. Religious syncretism is widespread among Brazilian Catholics. There is an overlay of Afro-Brazilian religions (like Candomblé, Quimbanda and Umbanda) with Catholic beliefs and practices, which many Catholic Brazilians do not find inconsistent with their faith. An example is the Feast of Bonfim, a ritual in which mães-de-santo gather to wash the stairs of the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim in Salvador, Bahia. Catholics are far more likely to believe in good luck charms, fortune-tellers, faith-healers and astrology than are converts to Protestantism.
  Religious change in Brazil is frequent. According to polling institute Datafolha, as of July 2013, approximately 57% of those aged over 16 years old were Catholic, while evangelicals constituted 28%.
  According to America Magazine in 2003, Brazilian Catholics have the highest score in the world on the image of God as loving and as mother. They are also more likely to see human nature as good rather than corrupt, and the world as good rather than evil. Brazilian Catholics are less likely to believe in the literal, word-for-word interpretation of the Bible than Protestants. They are also more likely to accept premarital sex, cohabitation before marriage, homosexuality and abortion. About 40% attend Masses at least once a month—approximately the same level as that of American Catholics. Almost 75% pray every day, but only 12% engage in Church activities; only 26% say they are "very religious". More than one out of five of those who were raised Catholics leave the church, most of them taking on no religious affiliation or Protestantism. However, Catholicism has the highest rate of retention. More than two-fifths of those who were raised Protestant are no longer Protestant; the Catholic Church picks up 16% of those who were raised Protestants.
  By race, 66.4% of whites are Catholic, along with 58.2% of blacks, 59.9% of East Asians, 64.1% of browns, and 50.7% of American Indians.
caption: Proportion of Catholics by state.
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