Brazil's Catholic population falls to 57% as evangelical Christianity expands

Main points

• Brazil's Catholic population share fell from 99.7% in 1872 to 56.7% in 2022.
• Evangelicals accounted for 26.9% of Brazilians aged 10 and above in 2022.
• The proportion reporting no religion rose to 9.3%.

The proportion of Brazilians identifying as Roman Catholic fell to 56.7% in 2022, down from 65.1% in 2010, marking a major change in the religious landscape of the world's largest Catholic country.

Figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) show that Catholicism, which accounted for nearly the entire population in the country's earliest census records, has steadily lost ground over successive decades.

In 1872, about 99.7% of Brazilians identified as Catholic. By 1940, the share had fallen to around 95%, before dropping more sharply in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Evangelical Christianity has expanded over the same period. Its share rose from 21.6% in 2010 to 26.9% in 2022, making it Brazil's second-largest religious group.

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The proportion of Brazilians reporting no religion also increased, from 7.9% to 9.3%.

The decline is also visible in absolute numbers. Brazil had approximately 100.2 million Catholics in 2022, down from 105.4 million in 2010. Over the same period, the evangelical population increased from 35 million to 47.4 million.

Catholicism nevertheless remained Brazil's largest religion, with its strongest regional presence in the Northeast, where 63.9% identified as Catholic. Evangelical Christianity had its highest regional share in the North, at 36.8%.

Other religious traditions also gained followers. The proportion identifying with Umbanda and Candomblé, religions with African roots, rose from 0.3% in 2010 to 1% in 2022.

The findings, released by IBGE in June 2025, illustrate how Brazil's religious identity has changed over 150 years, although Catholicism continues to account for more than half of the population covered by the latest figures.