(RNS) — Over the last decade, Catholicism has continued to decline sharply in Latin America, as the share of adults who are religiously unaffiliated rises, according to a new survey looking at religiosity in six countries.
The survey, fielded in 2024 and released Wednesday (Jan. 21) by the Pew Research Center, studied Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru and found declining rates of Catholicism in every country. Colombia saw the largest drop, where 6 in 10 (60%) adults identified as Catholic in 2024 compared with 8 in 10 (79%) in the 2013-2014 survey.
The smallest drop in Catholicism was in Peru — the country where Pope Leo served for more than two decades before being elected pope — with a 9-point decrease over the decade between surveys (76% in 2013-2014 down to 67% in 2024).
Meanwhile, the survey found the religiously unaffiliated nearly doubled or saw even larger gains in every country. In Brazil, where the gains were the smallest, the unaffiliated grew from 8% to 15% of the population. In Peru, 12% of adults identified as religiously unaffiliated in 2024, up from just 4% a decade ago.
“Catholic share of Latin American populations has fallen since 2013-14” (Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center)
But religiously unaffiliated gains were largest in Chile and Colombia. A third of Chileans identified as religiously unaffiliated in the most recent Pew survey, more than double the 16% of Chileans who said the same a decade ago, reflecting a 17-point gain. Colombia also saw a 17-point gain in the religiously unaffiliated. In 2024, nearly a quarter (23%) said they were religiously unaffiliated, almost quadrupling the 6% who said they were unaffiliated in the survey a decade earlier.
Despite dramatic growth in Pentecostalism in previous decades, Pew found that, over roughly the last decade, while Protestantism stayed steady in all the surveyed countries, the share of Protestants who were Pentecostal dropped.
In Argentina, where 16% of adults identified as Protestant in 2024, only 54% of Protestants said they were Pentecostal in the 2024 survey, compared with 71% a decade earlier. That reflects a 17-point, statistically significant change, though Pew cautioned that the sample sizes of Protestants are small, creating large margins of error in all countries. Brazil, with Protestants co …