In the 72 hours that Pope Leo XIV will spend in Argentina starting this Sunday afternoon, when he will arrive from Uruguay, it is expected that nearly seven million people will mobilize to participate in the massive activities that he will lead, to listen to him or just to see him pass by. More than 25,000 volunteers signed up to collaborate in the organization of the visit and the Church ordered the production of one and a half million hosts (including a special batch for celiacs) that will be taught at the three massive masses that the Pontiff will celebrate. But the magnitude of these figures, an expression of the popular fervor that the Pope will encounter on his tour of America, contrasts with the decline reflected in the data on the Catholic faith in the region.
Catholicism has its largest base of faithful in the world in Latin America and is, by far, the majority in the region. However, its decline is sustained and has accentuated in the last decade. For 30 years, Latinobarómetro, which conducts annual studies on the perception of democracy and social attitudes in 17 countries, has asked the question “what is your religion?” The 80% of Latin Americans who identified themselves as Catholic in 1995 has become 55% in 2026, when the last survey was carried out among 19,207 interviewees. By country, Uruguay is where the fewest people consider themselves Catholic according to these data, only 35%, compared to 69% in Mexico or 67% in Peru, the last country to which he will travel on this tour, where he became a citizen and lived for two decades.
In parallel, the data show how the number of people who do not identify with any religion is increasing. In those three decades, they have gone from 4% of Latin Americans to the current 16%, four times more. Another survey, that of the Pew Research Center, based in Washington, also reflects this phenomenon in its latest analysis based on interviews with 6,200 people in six of the most populated countries in the region: Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile. Those who do not profess any religion are double what they were ten years ago in Argentina (from 11% to 24%), almost triple in Mexico (from 7% to 20%) and almost quadruple in Colombia (from 6% to 23%). “Christianity and belief in God are maintained throughout the region, but now what is observed is the transition from Catholic to [not believing in] anything, from evangelical to nothing,” explains Peruvian theologian and sociologist José Luis Pérez Guadalupe.
The vast majority of Latin Americans believe in God, at least that's what nine out of ten say in that Pew Research Center survey. Even those who do not subscribe to any religion believe, a growing group. It is such a widespread idea that many presidents allude to God in their speeches or thank him in their public interventions regardless of their ideology, such as the leftist Lula in Brazil and the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia.
The strong expansion of evangelism in the region in recent decades, especially in Brazil and Central America, has also contributed to the decline of Catholicism, although in recent years there has been a certain stagnation in the growth of this creed. The Latinobarómetro data shows how 25 years ago, only 6% declared themselves evangelical, when now 19% do so. Ariel Goldstein, sociologist, right-wing researcher and author of the book Evangelical Power (Editorial Icono, 2021), believes that this Protestant branch gained space in part because “it moves away from the rigidity of the Church, the Vatican hierarchy.” "It adapts better to diverse environments, pastors use social networks and connects with the idea of prosperity, with the entrepreneur who strives, sacrifices and succeeds as a sign that God is on their side. It is a different concept from poverty in Catholicism, in which God helps the poor," he explains. Part of this ideology has had a strong translation into politics, especially in Brazil, where the ultra-defeated and fled candidate Flávio Bolsonaro proposed creating a ministry of prosperity in a nod to the evangelical vote.
“Latin America continues to be the great Catholic quarry in the world, but there is an abandonment of institutionalized religion in favor of a direct relationship with God,” explains Marta Lagos, director of Latinobarómetro. Furthermore, this growing number of people who do not subscribe to any religion "coexist with an increase in small religious movements, belief in pilgrimages, virgins... there is a look at the traditions in each country." It is striking that the institution in which citizens in the region trust the most is the Catholic Church, according to Latinobarómetro, while the last place is occupied by political parties. “This speaks of the resilience of the Church despite the punishment for the pedophile scandal, but above all it reflects the collapse of the institutions.”
Although the decline of Catholicism cuts across the entire region, the processes are different in each country. In Uruguay, the Pope's first stop on his visit to America, the decline in parishioners occurs in a historical context that has led the country to be one of the most secular in the world. It is there where, within the framework of this tour, Leo XIV's speech finds greater harmony with political power, embodied in the left-wing Government of Yamandú Orsi. “Although the left is basically agnostic and atheist, there is a confluence of humanisms with the discourse of social justice sustained by the Church since [the papacy of] Francis,” says Nelson Villarreal, professor and researcher at the Universities of the Republic and the Catholic University of Uruguay. This confluence, which reveals the dual political and religious role of the figure of the Pope, is expressed in “the articulation of public policies to achieve common objectives” that prioritize “human dignity, overcoming poverty and inequality, confronting war and defending peace,” adds Villarreal.
The contrast with Argentina is stark. While in Uruguay there is a clear separation of the State and the Church, in the country today governed by the far-right Javier Milei, for whom social justice is synonymous with "a robbery" and "an aberration", the Catholic Church retains strong institutional power, with strong participation in social policies, education and health, among other sectors. In fact, the Argentine Church is a legal entity under public law, unlike the rest of the religious confessions, which are private legal entities. Neither the persistence of that privileged status, nor the fact that for 12 years the Pope has been an Argentine, Francisco (2013-2025), have stopped the decline of Catholicism in the country. If in 1960 90% of the population declared themselves Catholic, that affiliation fell to 76% in 2008 and this year it drops to 58%, according to data presented by the Society, Culture and Religion area of the National Council for Scientific Research (Ceil-Conicet).
Along with other factors that had a regional impact, in Argentina Catholicism was particularly affected by ecclesiastical collusion with State terrorism, says sociologist Fortunato Mallimaci, professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires and Conicet. “The Church was very weakened on a social level after its total complicity with the dictatorship [1976-1983], which was civic, military and religious,” he warns. The distance between society and the Catholic hierarchy later increased with the Church's rejection of divorce, something similar to what has happened in recent years with the debates on abortion and euthanasia.
The Peru to which Leo XIV will return this Wednesday is one of those with the highest percentage of Catholics and where the decline is less pronounced. He is the Peruvian Pope, and it is the country where he is valued the most (6.8), only behind Paraguay (7.1), according to a classification from this year's Latinobarómetro that asks for a grade of 0 to 10 for the Pontiff. In another table from the same survey, Leo XIV is the second highest rated in a list of presidents and leaders from around the world. The first is Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador.
