In 2023, about 33 percent of Americans were Protestants, down from 69 percent in 1948. In that same year, about 22 percent of Americans were Catholic, while 22 percent said that they had no religion at all.

Except for Uruguay, over ** percent of the population in all the selected Latin American countries defined themselves as Catholics in 2000. However, by 2023, that was the case in only three countries: Mexico, Peru and Colombia. Over this 20-year period, Panama experienced the largest decrease in the share of Catholic believers, plummeting from **** to **** percent.

Catholics to Population {title at top of page}Data Developers: Burhans, Molly A., Cheney, David M., Emege, Thomas, Gerlt, R.. . “Catholics to Population {title at top of page}”. Scale not given. Version 1.0. MO and CT, USA: GoodLands Inc., Catholic Hierarchy, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2019.Web map developer: Molly Burhans, October 2019Web app developer: Molly Burhans, October 2019GoodLands’ polygon data layers, version 2.0 for global ecclesiastical boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church:Although care has been taken to ensure the accuracy, completeness and reliability of the information provided, due to this being the first developed dataset of global ecclesiastical boundaries curated from many sources it may have a higher margin of error than established geopolitical administrative boundary maps. Boundaries need to be verified with appropriate Ecclesiastical Leadership. The current information is subject to change without notice. No parties involved with the creation of this data are liable for indirect, special or incidental damage resulting from, arising out of or in connection with the use of the information. We referenced 1960 sources to build our global datasets of ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Often, they were isolated images of dioceses, historical documents and information about parishes that were cross checked. These sources can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11ANlH1S_aYJOyz4TtG0HHgz0OLxnOvXLHMt4FVOS85Q/edit#gid=0To learn more or contact us please visit: https://good-lands.org/The Catholic Leadership global maps information is derived from the Annuario Pontificio, which is curated and published by the Vatican Statistics Office annually, and digitized by David Cheney at Catholic-Hierarchy.org -- updated are supplemented with diocesan and news announcements. GoodLands maps this into global ecclesiastical boundaries. Admin 3 Ecclesiastical Territories:Burhans, Molly A., Cheney, David M., Gerlt, R.. . “Admin 3 Ecclesiastical Territories For Web”. Scale not given. Version 1.2. MO and CT, USA: GoodLands Inc., Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2019.Derived from:Global Diocesan Boundaries:Burhans, M., Bell, J., Burhans, D., Carmichael, R., Cheney, D., Deaton, M., Emge, T. Gerlt, B., Grayson, J., Herries, J., Keegan, H., Skinner, A., Smith, M., Sousa, C., Trubetskoy, S. “Diocesean Boundaries of the Catholic Church” [Feature Layer]. Scale not given. Version 1.2. Redlands, CA, USA: GoodLands Inc., Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2016.Using: ArcGIS. 10.4. Version 10.0. Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2016.Boundary ProvenanceStatistics and Leadership DataCheney, D.M. “Catholic Hierarchy of the World” [Database]. Date Updated: August 2019. Catholic Hierarchy. Using: Paradox. Retrieved from Original Source.Catholic HierarchyAnnuario Pontificio per l’Anno .. Città del Vaticano :Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, Multiple Years.The data for these maps was extracted from the gold standard of Church data, the Annuario Pontificio, published yearly by the Vatican. The collection and data development of the Vatican Statistics Office are unknown. GoodLands is not responsible for errors within this data. We encourage people to document and report errant information to us at data@good-lands.org or directly to the Vatican.Additional information about regular changes in bishops and sees comes from a variety of public diocesan and news announcements.

Catholics to Population {title at top of page}Data Developers: Burhans, Molly A., Cheney, David M., Emege, Thomas, Gerlt, R.. . “Catholics to Population {title at top of page}”. Scale not given. Version 1.0. MO and CT, USA: GoodLands Inc., Catholic Hierarchy, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2019.Web map developer: Molly Burhans, October 2019Web app developer: Molly Burhans, October 2019GoodLands’ polygon data layers, version 2.0 for global ecclesiastical boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church:Although care has been taken to ensure the accuracy, completeness and reliability of the information provided, due to this being the first developed dataset of global ecclesiastical boundaries curated from many sources it may have a higher margin of error than established geopolitical administrative boundary maps. Boundaries need to be verified with appropriate Ecclesiastical Leadership. The current information is subject to change without notice. No parties involved with the creation of this data are liable for indirect, special or incidental damage resulting from, arising out of or in connection with the use of the information. We referenced 1960 sources to build our global datasets of ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Often, they were isolated images of dioceses, historical documents and information about parishes that were cross checked. These sources can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11ANlH1S_aYJOyz4TtG0HHgz0OLxnOvXLHMt4FVOS85Q/edit#gid=0To learn more or contact us please visit: https://good-lands.org/The Catholic Leadership global maps information is derived from the Annuario Pontificio, which is curated and published by the Vatican Statistics Office annually, and digitized by David Cheney at Catholic-Hierarchy.org -- updated are supplemented with diocesan and news announcements. GoodLands maps this into global ecclesiastical boundaries. Admin 3 Ecclesiastical Territories:Burhans, Molly A., Cheney, David M., Gerlt, R.. . “Admin 3 Ecclesiastical Territories For Web”. Scale not given. Version 1.2. MO and CT, USA: GoodLands Inc., Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2019.Derived from:Global Diocesan Boundaries:Burhans, M., Bell, J., Burhans, D., Carmichael, R., Cheney, D., Deaton, M., Emge, T. Gerlt, B., Grayson, J., Herries, J., Keegan, H., Skinner, A., Smith, M., Sousa, C., Trubetskoy, S. “Diocesean Boundaries of the Catholic Church” [Feature Layer]. Scale not given. Version 1.2. Redlands, CA, USA: GoodLands Inc., Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2016.Using: ArcGIS. 10.4. Version 10.0. Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2016.Boundary ProvenanceStatistics and Leadership DataCheney, D.M. “Catholic Hierarchy of the World” [Database]. Date Updated: August 2019. Catholic Hierarchy. Using: Paradox. Retrieved from Original Source.Catholic HierarchyAnnuario Pontificio per l’Anno .. Città del Vaticano :Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, Multiple Years.The data for these maps was extracted from the gold standard of Church data, the Annuario Pontificio, published yearly by the Vatican. The collection and data development of the Vatican Statistics Office are unknown. GoodLands is not responsible for errors within this data. We encourage people to document and report errant information to us at data@good-lands.org or directly to the Vatican.Additional information about regular changes in bishops and sees comes from a variety of public diocesan and news announcements.

Roman Catholic was the most common religion affiliation in Mexico in 2023. In a survey carried out that year, roughly **** percent of Mexican respondents claimed to be of catholic faith. Mexico ranks among the Latin American countries with the highest share of Catholics. More than nine percent of respondents answered they didn't profess any religion.

During a survey conducted in 2023, approximately 54 percent of respondents in 17 Latin American countries claimed to be catholic. Meanwhile, 14.9 percent of the people participating in the survey said they did not profess any religion.In Mexico, more than 69 percent of respondents said they professed Catholicism. Particularly in Honduras, Colombia and Ecuador, most Christians think religion is very important in their lives.

According to a study conducted between ********* and **********, Muslims and Hindus were more likely to be younger compared to other religious groups in the United States, with ** percent of Muslims and ** percent of Hindus aged below 50 years old. In contrast, most Protestants and Catholics in the U.S. were 50 years or older.

According to a study conducted between July 2023 and March 2024, more women were Christians, Protestants, Catholics, and Latter-day Saints (Mormons) than men in the United States. In contrast, only ** percent of women identified as Orthodox Christian, compared to ** percent of men and *** percent who identified in some other way.

This survey, part of a larger study of the priest shortage, uses important components from the 1970 "https://www.norc.org/Pages/default.aspx" Target="_blank">National Opinion Research Center (NORC) priest survey conducted by Greeley and Schoenherr. One-third of the dioceses and religious institutes from the earlier survey were randomly selected. Questionnaires were sent to 28 dioceses and 29 institutes, with a return rate of 86.8 percent or N=1,062.

Estimation of Dominant Land Use / Land Cover per DioceseDATA (details below): 1. MODIS Land Cover, Land Cover Type 2: University of Maryland (UMD) scheme2. Global Diocesan Boundaries, 2.0 2019 (1:3M Scale)DATA PROCESSINGZONAL STATISTICS: MODIS Land Cover, Land Cover Type 2: University of Maryland (UMD) scheme --> Global Diocesan Boundaries, 2.0 2019 (1:3M Scale)FIELD CALCULATION (percentage): Type of LCLU / Total LCLUFIELD CALCULATION (Forest Total): Sum (EvergreenNeedleleafForests, EvergreenBroadleafForests, DeciduousNeedleleafForests, DeciduousBroadleafForests, MixedForests) NOTE:Values for various landuse and land cover (LULC) codes are in pixels. Pixels were 500m sq. Total represents sum of values between 1 and 17 which represented the actual data. Data pixels with center in a diocese can dived each class by the total to get percentage, more accurately this is not simply the percent of LULC per diocese but a percent of pixels representing LULC in diocese. Values could be used to rank by a particular LULC type or could normalize by area also.Data development:Burhans, Molly A., Cheney, David M., Emege, Thomas, Gerlt, R.. . “Land use and land cover per diocese”. 1:3M. Version 1.0. MO and CT, USA: GoodLands Inc., Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 2019.Affiliated Map and Application Development:Molly Burhans, October 2019DATA SET 1: LAND USE LAND COVERGlobal mosaics of the standard MODIS land cover type dataChannan, S., K. Collins, and W. R. Emanuel. 2014. Global mosaics of the standard MODIS land cover type data. University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, Maryland, USA. 2013.ABOUT MODIS LAND COVERINFORMATION QUOTED FROM:URL: https://yceo.yale.edu/modis-land-cover-product-mcd12q1SOURCE: Friedl, M. A., Sulla-Menashe, D., Tan, B., Schneider, A., Ramankutty, N., Sibley, A., andHuang, X. (2010). MODIS Collection 5 global land cover: Algorithm refinements and characterization of new datasets. Remote Sensing of Environment, 114, 168–182.

In 2023, **** percent of Americans were unaffiliated with any religion. A further **** percent of Americans were White evangelical Protestants, and an additional **** percent were White mainline Protestants. Religious trends in the United States Although the United States is still home to the largest number of Christians worldwide, the nation has started to reflect a more diverse religious landscape in recent years. Americans now report a wide range of religious beliefs and backgrounds, in addition to an increasing number of people who are choosing to identify with no religion at all. Studies suggest that many Americans have left their previous religion to instead identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, with many reasoning that they stopped believing in the religion's teachings, that they didn't approve of negative teachings or treatment of LGBTQ+ people, or that their family was never that religious growing up. Christian controversies Over the last few years, controversies linked to Christian denominations have plagued the nation, including reports of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Christian churches have also been accused of supporting discriminatory actions against LGBTQ+ people and people belonging to other religious groups. In addition, there have been increasing concerns about Christian nationalism, the political ideology that asserts that America was founded to be a Christian nation. Although the majority of Americans still think that declaring the United States a Christian nation would go against the U.S. Constitution, studies found that most Republicans would be in favor of this change.

According to a study conducted between ********* and **********, around a quarter of Christians, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were retired in the United States, religious groups which are also more likely to be aged 65 or older. In contrast, only *** percent of Muslims and ***** percent of Hindus in the U.S. were retired during this time period.

Although traditionally a Catholic country, Spain saw a decline in the number of believers over the past years. Compared to 2011, when the share of believers accounted for slightly over 70 percent of the Spanish population, the Catholic community lost approximately 15 percentage points of their faithful by June 2025 with a share of 56.1 percent of the surveyed population. Believers of a religion other than Catholicism accounted for approximately 3.6 percent of the Spanish population in 2025 according to the most recent data. A Catholic majority, a practicing minority Going to mass is no longer a thing in Spain, or so it would seem when looking at the latest statistics about the matter: over 47 percent of those who consider themselves Catholics almost never attend any religious service in June 2025. The not so Catholic Spain Around 37 percent of the surveyed population stated to be either non-believers or full atheists in 2025. Non-believers or people that do not have a religious faith fluctuated over the past years with the latest figures showing a 21 percent of people that categorize themselves as so. The share of Spanish atheists is on the rise according to the most recent surveys, taking up 13.3 percent of respondents in June 2025.

The crisis of the Roman Catholic church in the South American country of Chile has led to a dramatic fall in the level of trust that Chileans have in the institution. According to a survey, the level of trust dropped to 31 percent in 2020, down from 60 percent in 2005. The sex abuse scandals uncovered in 2018, together with the subsequent investigation of over a hundred clergymen and the mass resignation of the country's bishops, have severely damaged the church's reputation, turning it into the lowest in Latin America.

This statistic shows a ranking of major American denominations in 2010, by percentage of their congregations in good or excellent financial health. In 2010, about ** percent of congregations of the Roman Catholic Church were in good or excellent financial health.

Roman Catholic is the most common religious affiliation in Colombia. In a survey carried out in 2023, nearly ** percent of Colombian respondents claimed to be of Catholic faith, whereas the second most chosen religion was Evangelism, with **** percent of the people interviewed. More than ** percent of respondents answered they had no religious affiliation. The advent of evangelicalism in Colombia and LAC The share of Catholics in Colombia is above the average in Latin America and the Caribbean, where about ** percent of adults identify as followers of Catholicism. Nevertheless, even if Colombia stood out historically as one of the countries with the largest share of Catholics in the region, their numbers have been dwindling considerably in the past few decades: in the year 2000, **** of Colombians identified as Catholics, over ** percent points more than two decades later. Meanwhile, Evangelism keeps gaining ground in both the country and the region. While merely *** percent of Colombians were evangelical in 1996, this share had grown almost five-fold by 2020, while atheists and agnostics passed from *** to **** in the same lapse of time. The whole of Latin America is experiencing a similar trend, with evangelists accounting for more than one fifth of the population in countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Brazil. The success of Evangelical Churches in Latin America is related, among other things, to the creation of social safety nets in poor communities, the rise of conservative political parties and movements, and more flexible standards for ordination.
Religiosity among young Colombians Interestingly, eastern religions such as Buddhism enjoy the same popularity as Evangelism and Protestantism among young Colombians. Religion seems to have a considerable impact on youngsters’ life. More than half of surveyed Colombians aged between 15 and 29 claimed that religious beliefs provided them with inner peace, while another **** and ** percent said that it helped them to quit drugs and gangs, respectively. Only *** percent of the respondents affirmed that religious beliefs had no influence on their lives. As for the religiosity of young Catholic Colombians, very few claimed to be very observant. Around ** percent considered themselves not very observant, while around a third classified as somewhat observant.

During a 2022 survey conducted in the United States, it was found that 91 percent of respondents had heard of Pope Benedict XVI. Around 39 percent of interviewees stated that they liked him, whereas 23 percent claimed the opposite. On the contrary, 29 percent of respondents were neutral.

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI was born in Bavaria, Germany as Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger. He was elected as Pope in 2005 after Pope John Paul II and led the Catholic Church until 2013. Indeed, in that year, he announced his resignation due to his advanced age, the first papal resignation after Gregory XII in 1415.

Catholicism in the world

Catholicism is one of the main religions in Europe, mostly practiced in southern countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal. For instance, almost 60 percent of Spanish people considered themselves Catholic in 2022, although this is down from over 70 percent a decade earlier. Despite Protestantism being the main religion in the North, some northern Europeans are Catholic. For example, over 25 percent of the German population was Catholic in 2021. Finally, at lower rates, Catholicism is also practiced in other countries like the United States, with around 13 percent of Americans identifying as Catholic.

This statistic shows the giving levels across congregations in the United States in 2008, by faith tradition. As of 2008, about 11 percent of Catholic adherents give 10 percent or more of their net income regularly to church.

According to a survey conducted in 2023, ** percent of all U.S. adults said that they believed in God while ** percent of Americans who identified with no religion shared this belief. In comparison, ** percent of Americans who were Protestant or other Christian and ** percent of Americans who were Catholic also said that they believed in God in that year.

The statistics shows results of a survey conducted in 2013 and 2014 in the United States, highlighting the religious identity of US citizens. The results have been sorted by year and percentage of people with a particular religious identity. In both 2013 and 2014, approximately 24 percent of respondents identified as Catholic.