Roman Catholicism in Puerto Rico

The Roman Catholic Church in Puerto Rico is part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and the curia in Rome.

The CIA World Factbook reports that 85% of the population of Puerto Rico is Roman Catholic, with the remaining 15% divided among Protestantism, Islam, and Judaism. However, the CIA report provides no date or source for the data; it may be outdated. Some sources, including Pew Research Center, put the Catholic percentage at approximately 70%. An Associated Press article in March 2014 stated that "more than 70 percent of whom identify themselves as Catholic" but provided no source for this information. (It may have been using the 2010 Pew Research data.)

However, in a November 2014 report, with the sub-title Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region, Pew Research indicated that only 56% of Puerto Ricans were Catholic and that 33% were Protestant; this survey was completed between October 2013 and February 2014.

Religious breakdown in Puerto Rico (2010)

When discussing Catholicism in Puerto Rico, Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves of San Juan offered this comment in 2007. "Its deepest roots are Latino ... U.S. rule began in 1898, at the end of the Spanish–American War, but indigenous, African and Spanish cultures "shaped its identity for 400 years" and that influence "cannot be undone overnight." The shift from Spanish to U.S. rule brought a wave of anti-Catholic sentiment that led to the prohibition of the processions that are a mainstay of Latin American religious practice, as well as government policies that prohibited schools from teaching in Spanish. Since the approval of a Puerto Rican Constitution in 1952, however, popular religious traditions such as processions and festivals honoring communities' patron saints have taken root again.

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