Why Pope Francis couldn’t rally more fellow Latin Americans to his faith

The Argentina-born pontiff, who died at 88 on Monday, won the hearts of millions with his humility and simplicity during seven visits to Latin America. His papacy resonated with a poverty-stricken region where the church often fills gaps left by a lacking state.

But his appeal wasn’t enough to halt the decline of the Catholic Church across a region central to its endurance.

Millions of Latin Americans have left the Catholic Church over the past decade. They have joined other faiths, primarily Pentecostalism—an evangelical Christian movement, steeped in spiritualism, that often promises followers wealth and success in exchange for devotion. Others have just stopped believing in God altogether.

Nowhere is the shift more dramatic than Brazil, the most populous Catholic country and a battleground of global relevance for the Vatican.

Catholicism, a legacy of the country’s Portuguese colonizers, held a near-monopoly over Brazil for some four centuries, shaping the country’s moral code, schools and courts.

But in 2022, Catholics ceased to be a majority and by 2032 they will likely be outnumbered by evangelical Christians, said José Eustáquio Diniz Alves, a Brazilian demographer.

“When the pope was elected, people really believed that he could stop the Catholics losing Latin Americans, but this is not what happened," Diniz Alves said.

Political changes, including secularization of governments and legislation promoting religious freedoms, reduced the Catholic Church’s advantages over other faiths. And the number of people with no religious affiliation has grown globally, driven in part by advances in technology and secular education, researchers say.

But at Solomon’s Temple, a vast $300 million evangelical church in downtown São Paulo built to replicate the ancient structure, followers give a simpler explanation: The Catholic Church turned its back on them.

Like most Brazilians, Josilene da Silva, a grocery-store cashier from São Paulo, was raised a Catholic. But when her husband was shot dead by police several years ago, leaving her to raise three children by herself, she found comfort in the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, one of Brazil’s biggest and richest evangelical churches.

“Catholics are all about punishment, but I’ve suffered enough," da Silva said. “The pope seemed like a nice man, though."

Evangelical churches have tailored their ministries to the disparate passions of Brazilians, from temples catering to the gay community to ones specifically for heavy-metal fans and surfers. Boat-borne temples have voyaged up the Amazon River to convert evermore distant indigenous tribes.

Catholics haven’t met people on their terms, Diniz Alves said. And they certainly haven’t matched some evangelical churches in promising to make their followers rich.

While Catholics venerate poverty, neo-Pentecostal churches such as Universal preach a “prosperity theology" that material wealth isn’t a sin, but evidence of God’s grace.

At Solomon’s Temple, suited men line up at the altar with velvet red sacks and credit-card machines as the pastor promises his followers that they too will get rich if they donate generously. Other churches feature businessmen who motivate audiences with rags-to-riches tales.

It is a powerful message among Brazil’s middle class, which has grown by over 40 million people in the past 20 years and for whom buying their first washing machine or car is a hard-earned milestone of social mobility.

The share of Latin Americans who identified as Catholic dropped to 54% in 2024 from 80% in 1995, while evangelical Christians affiliation grew to 19% last year, up from 6% 30 years ago, according to a survey by Latinobarómetro, a Chilean-based pollster.

The number of people unaffiliated with a religion has risen at a similar rate, growing to 19% from 4% over the same period.

Catholics are now a minority in six other countries in the region including Uruguay, Chile and the Dominican Republic. It is a matter of time before many others follow suit, researchers say. In Colombia, where 57% of the population identified as Catholic in 2024, disenchanted followers say priests are out of touch with the everyday struggles of their parishioners.

“He was the first Spanish-speaking pope and wanted to do something positive, to be inclusive, but the problem lies with his colleagues," said Alberto Ronseria in Bogotá, who converted to evangelical Christianity some 15 years ago.

Growing support in the region for gender equality and gay rights has put the church’s conservative views at odds with younger generations. As the church’s hold on society weakens, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia have legalized or decriminalized abortion in recent years.

Clerical sexual abuses from Chile to Argentina eroded trust in the church regionally.

Argentina should have been an easy win for an Argentine pope. But Pope Francis also struggled to win followers there. It was the only major country in the region he didn’t visit during his papacy.

Born to a railroad worker and a homemaker, the “slum pope," as he was known back home, was celebrated for his work with immigrants and the poor. But he was wary of getting involved in the country’s polarized politics after allegations that he didn’t do enough to stop human-rights abuses during Argentina’s 1976-83 dictatorship.

“Can you believe that he traveled around the world and never once came to Argentina?" said Ana Caliegari from Chivilcoy, in the countryside near Buenos Aires, who came to the city to visit her grandchildren. “My mother went to mass every day at 6 a.m. I go every Sunday, and my children no longer do. Everything has changed," she said.

The pope knew all of this, said Diniz Alves, the Brazilian demographer. He was aware of the reasons for the Catholic Church’s decline in the region, but couldn’t stop it, partly because of resistance from the church’s conservative wing.

As the Catholic Church has alienated some of its faithful, evangelical churches have zealously courted new members in countries such as Brazil.

Some 17 new evangelical temples opened a day on average in 2019, according to government figures, giving Brazil more religious institutions than educational and health facilities combined. Some 580,000 religious institutions operate in the country, compared with 264,000 educational facilities and 248,000 health facilities, according to the 2022 census.

The Vatican has also lost purchase on Latin America’s institutions. Evangelicals have taken hold of television networks, political parties, courts and even security forces.

Several judges and prosecutors who led Brazil’s recent Car Wash anticorruption investigation are devoted evangelicals. They say their faith gave them the courage to challenge Brazil’s rich and powerful.

The country’s evangelical bloc in government has more than 200 members, almost half of Congress, pushing politics to the right and helping to elect former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro in 2018.

“They’ve made their strength felt over the past 10 years but they’re likely to be even more powerful in the next decade," said Leonardo Barreto, a Brasília-based political analyst.

Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com