2022 Census
2022 Census: In Rio de Janeiro (RJ), IBGE presents preliminary results on religions
June 06, 2025 04h04 PM | Last Updated: June 10, 2025 04h02 PM
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) released, on Friday (6) the data relative to the “2022 Population Census: Religions: preliminary sample results. The press release was held at Casa Brasil IBGE, memory facility of the Institute located on the ground floor of Palácio da Fazenda, downtown Rio de Janeiro (RJ). Thousands of people attended the release event, including representatives of religious associations, researchers, students IBGE civil servants, journalists and other guests, which was streamed live on the Institute's social media channels. Watch the video here.
The release encompasses information on religions and cults followed in the country, by persons aged 10 and over on the date of reference of the survey. Data were presented according to groups of the declared religious, disaggregated by sex, color or race, age groups and level of schooling of the population, will be made available for Brazil, Major Regions, states, municipalities and other geographies based on Municipalities. Here are the results on religions.
The event was attended by the Director of Surveys of the Institute, Gustavo Junger, and by the Coordinator General of the Center for Information Documentation and Dissemination, Daniel Castro. Bruno Mandelli Perez, technical coordinator of the publication and Maria Goreth Santos, who is responsible for the topic of religion and Luiz Felipe Barros, analyst from the Population Census Technical Division, were responsible for the presentation.
Junger highlighted that “the Census is an accomplishment of society, and a lot of effort was made by the IBGE to produce and deliver it to the population. Challenges such as the pandemic, which led to the postponement of the Census operation and to the adoption of special data collection protocols. The context of this latest Census turned it into an even more challenging Census.”
The director of Surveys also highlighted the importance of having data on religion in the Population Census. “These data are an important cultural element in the Brazilian society and allow a series of analyses about religions in the country. Collecting such information was only possible thanks to the efforts of IBGE civil servants, enumerators, supervisors, technicians from state superintendencies, branches and of our DPE divisions and other directorates.”
In her presentation, Goreth Santos showed the new profile of religion in the country, shown by the 2022 Census, and the main changes since the 2010 Census. The Census is the only statistical survey about the topic religion. “In 150 years of enumeration, a lot has changed in our country and in society as a whole regarding the topic religion. In 1872, the enumerator should list each informant as ‘cathólico’ (Catholic) or ‘acathólico’ (non-Catholic), according to the Portuguese spelling adopted then. Also, the slave population was entirely counted as Catholic, following the declaration of their lord.”
Luiz Felipe Barros also highlighted that this is an important step in the dissemination of the 2022 Census results. This topic is deeply related to the identity and diversity of our population, essential information to understand the composition of our country, its cultural transformations and how spirituality is experienced by Brazilians. This dimension of the Census allows us to identify the main changes in religious profiles and to observe the mark of a territory in these groups."
