Credit: Instagram/aguavivaperu
Could this be scheduled for 10am Saturday please? Thank you
The warm up act resembles a K-pop band. For half an hour, five young singers bounce on the stage, belting out glitzy Christian tracks in the vast auditorium.
“Even when I failed you, you were always there for me,” croons one of the men in white trainers, black jeans and a white T-shirt, as multi-coloured spotlights flash across the stage. “A day in your house is worth more than 1,000 years without you,” sings a young woman.
The Amauta Coliseum, in the centre of the Peruvian capital, Lima, which once hosted everything from a Miss Universe pageant to Ricky Martin concerts, is perhaps only a third full.
But with a capacity of 20,000 people, that still means this evangelical service has attracted more congregants – by two orders of magnitude – than most Catholic churches in Latin America, which is experiencing a drastic decline in Catholicism despite the first South American pontiff, Pope Francis, sitting in the Vatican from 2013 until his death last month.
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Eventually, the band makes way for Carla Hornung, a slim, blonde preacher, in a flowing floral trouser suit. With a gleaming smile, she launches into a sermon about “identity” and how to avoid “toxic thoughts, emotions and ideas” by acknowledging Christ.
Amid the self-help lecture peppered with biblical references, Miss Hornung encourages followers of Agua Viva, a neo-Pentecostal mega-church that preaches an unabashedly materialistic “theology of prosperity”, to enrol in its “leadership” MA programme.
At one point, the huge TV screen behind her displays Agua Viva’s bank account details, complete with a QR code, as she urges congregants to donate.
Similar scenes play out not just on Sundays but throughout the week in protestant churches large and small across Latin America, a region renowned as the most Catholic in the world, yet where evangelicals have for decades been rapidly attracting millions of converts.
Numbers vary and the demographics are complicated, but according to one major study by the Pew Research Center, only 69 per cent of Latin Americans identified as Catholic in 2013, down from 94 per cent in the 1950s.
Thanks to population growth, the number of Catholics has actually risen in all regions in the world over the past century, including Latin America. The total jumped from 1.39 billion in 2022 to 1.406 billion in 2023.
Yet while other regions, above all Africa and Asia, have seen significant jumps in the proportion of Catholics, Europe’s figures have remained stagnant, while the Church has, relatively, been rapidly losing ground in Latin America.
The trend in Latin America was established long before Pope Francis assumed office in 2013. It continued throughout his time in the Vatican, notwithstanding his common touch and immense popularity. His attempts to halt the slide – and their lack of success – are now part of his legacy.
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The reasons are complex and rooted in rapid social changes, especially rural-to-urban migration, says Richard Wood, a University of Southern California sociologist.
The process is part of the same global trend of a diversification in religious – and increasingly non-religious – beliefs evident in Europe, says José Luis Pérez Guadalupe, a sociologist from Lima’s University of the Pacific.
“Secularisation is different in Latin America,” he adds. “In Europe, it is rooted in rationality. Here it is cultural. The region remains overwhelmingly Christian and that is thanks to the Catholic Church. In that sense, evangelism is not a radical change. It’s not like converting to Islam.”
Changing attitudes on social issues have also left the Catholic establishment increasingly out of touch with many ordinary Latin Americans. Abortion and same sex marriage have been legalised in various nations, such as Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.
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Meanwhile, child sex abuse scandals have taken a toll on the Church’s legitimacy. Despite a hesitant start, there is “no doubt” that Pope Francis eventually dealt decisively with clerical paedophilia, and possibly prevented it from mushrooming further, says Paola Ugaz, a Peruvian journalist whose campaigning on the issue led to the pontiff inviting her to the Vatican in December.
Notwithstanding many deeply conservative clergy and lay leaders, the Catholic Church in Latin America may also have suffered from its association with progressive causes, such as the focus on human rights and economic inequality.
That “moral courage, to bear Catholic witness to basic human dignity”, including fighting sometimes unpopular battles on behalf of the poor and even democracy, has seen church figures, from bishops to nuns, assassinated down the years, especially in Central America, while also alienating some of the region’s elites, says Dr Wood.
Another reason is the relative lack of ordained priests. “The bar to becoming a Catholic priest is really high,” he adds. “You have to study theology for years. There’s celibacy, and you have to be male. There just aren’t that many.”
For evangelicals, however, becoming a preacher can be a rapid, often informal process that largely boils down to “charisma”, says Dr Pérez Guadalupe. “The bottom line is, will people in a church listen to you?”
Yet Catholicism’s decline in Latin America may also have been inevitable given its previous near total dominance. Since the 16th century, when, at the point of a sword, it was established as the hegemonic faith, the only way was down, Dr Wood says.
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Protestant missionaries first began making inroads in the 19th century. Those pioneers were principally Presbyterians and Methodists, with a strong social conscience. But since the 1960s, they have been overtaken by others, led by Pentecostals, preaching a more conservative interpretation of the gospel.
Often focused on individual advancement, their message speaks to the aspirations of Latin America’s working and lower middle classes struggling to escape from, or avoid falling back into, grinding poverty.
Many Pentecostals have also become involved in Right-wing politics. That often includes pushing a strong law-and-order message, even demanding the death penalty, that resonates in a region plagued by violent crime.
The Church has responded in multiple ways, beginning with the decision in the 1960s to translate the liturgy from Latin into local languages.
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Catholic theologians still debate how much deeper that process of “inculturation”, blending local culture into Church rituals, should go. One of the most sensitive areas is celibacy, especially in Africa, where it can undermine respect for Catholic clerics.
Since the 1990s, there has also been an acceptance that the Church had been too Eurocentric in its thinking. Indeed, many clerics in developed nations today hail from the developing world.
Meanwhile, there has also been a growing trend of “charismatic” Catholicism. The movement, which has no clear structure or leadership, has seen Catholic clergy borrow evangelical rituals, including prayer meetings away from churches, faith healing and even speaking tongues.
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As they leave the Amauta Coliseum, Yheison Ventura and Susan Mayta, a married couple who manage a small swimming academy, explain what drew them to Agua Viva.
“It’s more about the message than the preacher,” says Ms Mayta, 30. “This is much more direct. You connect with it. In a Catholic church, the priest is more distant, a bit like a boss. And the ceremonies are repetitive. They’re a bit boring.”
Her husband, 34, adds: “I really like the music here. It’s uplifting. I know the Pope. I liked him. He liked football. But that’s not going to make me go to a Catholic church.”
Now, following the death of the first Latin American pontiff, the challenge for the Church to maintain its relevance in the region may become even steeper.
Dr Wood says that the choice of the next pope is more complex than the way it is often portrayed, as a struggle between liberal and conservative strains of Catholicism.
He says: “Francis’s legacy is, as he often said, that the Church is for everyone. He made it more open, more human. Can it now maintain its traditions while also projecting itself into the future, with a sense of joy in the gospel?”
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