Brazilian church continues to lose churchgoers to evangelical groups, but pace is slowing

SÃO PAULO (OSV News) -- New census data out of Brazil shows that while Catholic numbers are still falling and evangelical churches continue to grow, the pace of this religious shift has noticeably slowed.

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, known by the Portuguese acronym IBGE, took more than two years to finally publicize the 2022 census information concerning religions on June 6.

The report showed that between 2010 and 2022 the proportion of Catholics decreased from 65% to 56.7%. At the same time, the percentage of evangelicals went from 21.6% to almost 27%.

The IBGE data demonstrated that the speed of the process of religious transition -- evangelicalism replacing Catholicism as the main religion in Brazil -- decreased from earlier projections.

Demographer José Eustáquio Diniz Alves said earlier predictions that evangelicals would overtake Catholics by 2032 now point closer to 2049.

The Catholics' annual decrease rate corresponded to -1.04% between 1991 and 2000 and to -0.89% between 2000 and 2010. Between 2010 and 2022, it went down to -0.69%.

"It means that Catholics keep decreasing and evangelicals keep growing, but at a slower pace," Diniz Alves said.

In Diniz Alves' opinion, the Catholic Church somehow managed to develop new strategies and reacted to the erosion it has been facing in Brazil over the past few decades.

"Movements like the charismatic Catholic renewal may have contributed, as well as Pope Francis's charisma," he argued.

The first Latin American pontiff, Francis showed his closeness to Brazilians when he visited the country in 2013.

"Pope Benedict XVI was a German intellectual, a more distant figure. Francis spoke about social and environmental issues, which are a direct part of the people's lives," Diniz Alves said.

In the opinion of Archbishop João Justino de Medeiros Silva of Goiânia, who is vice president of the bishops' conference, the percentage of Catholics who have been leaving the church over the past decades corresponds to a contingent that the parishes and communities didn't manage to take care of.

"Those people had fragile ties to their communities and were susceptible to accept any other invitation. Most of those people have already left the church," he said.

On the evangelicals' side, he thinks that the closeness of many pastors with former President Jair Bolsonaro may have driven away part of the churchgoers, Diniz Alves said for his part.

"Over the past decade, there has been a political radicalization among many evangelical churches. Far-right ideas may have moved the moderates away," he reasoned.

During Bolsonaro's presidential campaign in 2018, for instance, many churches defended the idea of loosening gun control in Brazil, something that is not accepted by many Christians. Bolsonaro partially accomplished it as president.

Dinis Alvez explained that a few demographers consider that the religious transition may never occur. They believe that the Catholic Church may have a maximum percentage of churchgoers to lose and that evangelicals won't grow forever.

"But the truth is that two Brazilian states -- Acre and Roraima -- and 245 cities have already transitioned and now have a majority of evangelicals. If that is their situation, why wouldn't the rest of the country undergo the same transformation?" he rhetorically asked.

Archbishop Medeiros Silva said that the church has been "maturing" its way of evangelizing and adapted its pastoral approach to the new context.

"In 10 years, maybe we'll see that the church lost even less people," he declared.

The archbishop said that the church has been seeing a gradual phenomenon of return to Catholicism. During Easter, for instance, he baptized 200 adults in his archdiocese. Groups of adults have been taking part in the sacrament of confirmation as well.

"This way, we realize things have been apparently changing in that scenario of a growing loss of churchgoers. I think the Brazilian church will eventually have the size it can keep," he concluded.