It is common to hear that Brazil is the largest Catholic country in the world. This mistaken notion arises from some confusion about what the country is as a State and the belief of a majority of the population. Claiming that Brazil is the largest Catholic nation in the world implies disregarding 36% of the population, a group comprising 54 million non-Catholic believers and 13 million people who have no religion or are atheists. This data, collected through surveys, are in agreement with official demographic data, which indicate a steady shrinkage of the Catholic population in Brazil when comparing data from 2000 with data from 1991. Thus, it would be better to claim that the largest Catholic population in the world lives in Brazil, a secular country.
The proposal of this article is to ponder over Brazilian secularity. To do so, I will start with a brief description of the succession of legislation which brought the Catholic Church to its prevailing position on the Brazilian religio...