Brazil is home to the world's largest Catholic population, according to new data released by the country's National Institute of Statistics (IBGE).

According to the 2022 census, Catholics made up 82.9% of Brazil’s population 30 years ago, but now 56.7% of the population, with religious results only released on Friday.

Meanwhile, the number of evangelicals continues to grow, with 9% of the population increasing to 26.9% over the past three decades.

Despite a slight decline in growth - the growth rate between 2000 and 2010 fell by 6.5 percentage points, and 5.3 since, new data suggests that for the first time at least one-quarter of Brazilians consider it evangelical.

Analysts did not designate sects among evangelicals and said they did not know if they would be detailed in the future.

"In recent years, we have seen the emergence of evangelicals and gradually declare themselves, standpoints, express their values, ideas and beliefs in society," said Maria Goreth Santos, an Ibic analyst.

Gospel singers and religious influencers have become superstars, becoming bestsellers with evangelical theme books, and Brazil's still very popular Telenovelas are increasingly bringing evangelical characters and storylines into their plots.

Politically, evangelicals have become an important political force, forming one of the main support bases for far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro and now poses an additional challenge to left-wing president Luiz Inácio inácio Lulada Silva as he prepares to seek a re-election in 2026.

A poll released earlier this week showed that despite positive indicators of economic indicators, the experienced South American leader struggled during his third term: disapproval is 57% of the general population, but even higher among evangelicals, accounting for 66%.

“Rationally speaking, the government understands what is needed to interact with the evangelicals, but internally, many party leaders in Lula still believe that religion is a thing of the past, and the faithful are just people who are not properly educated,” said Juliano Spyer, anthropologist and historian, who is the author of the Brazilian evangelical movement.

The new IBGE data also show that in proportion to each group, black evangelicals are much more than whites—a particularly relevant finding given that most of the Brazilian population (56%) is black.

Although Catholics remain the majority in both cases, only one-quarter of white Brazilians consider them evangelical, while one-third of black Brazilians.

The data also showed that the number of people without religious beliefs has increased, from 4.6% 30 years ago to 9.3% today.

Another important figure highlighted by IBGE researchers is that the number of followers of African Brazilian religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda has risen from 0.3% to 1%.

Brazilian nations have persecuted Africa-a followers of Brazilian religion.

Brazil is the country that kidnapped the most enslaved Africans, and during more than three centuries of slavery, it was forbidden to practice any belief outside of Catholicism. After its abolition in 1888, African religion was still criminalized.

Only in 1988 did practitioners in Umbanda and Candomblé obtain some form of state protection, and at least theoretically, practitioners in Umbanda and Candomblé obtain some form of state protection. However, in recent years, they have faced persecution again, this time from extremist Catholics and evangelicals, and even drug dealers claiming to accept Christianity.

Although followers of African-Brazil religion still represent a minority population, the rise of self-proclaimed believers may reflect two people who were previously commensurate with other religions out of fear and actual immigration, Santos said.

She believes that growth is “a potential result of all these movements celebrating African-Brazilian culture in recent years…with important figures in society, influential people and artists identify with these religions…and large-scale movements of religious intolerance”.