quality:corruption
Religion

Religion in Minas Gerais (2010)

According to the 2010 Brazilian census, most of the population consider themselves to be Catholic, which puts the state in ninth place when considering the percentage of the population belonging to this religion (70.4%). Although the number of Catholics has been gradually decreasing in recent years, Roman Catholicism is still strongly rooted in Minas Gerais' culture, especially in rural areas and inland cities where celebrations and festivities organized by community parishes are common, but religious pluralism has also grown in recent years.

Almost four million inhabitants are evangelical. According to the number of followers, the Assembleias de Deus (more than seven hundred thousand followers), the Baptist Church (more than five hundred thousand followers) and the Foursquare Church (almost three hundred and fifty thousand adherents) stand out. Around 420 thousand people in the state are followers of Spiritism, whose important promoter in Brazil was the Minas Gerais-born medium Chico Xavier. There are also several other religious minorities in the state, including Umbanda and Candomblé, which together have less than twenty thousand followers and whose rituals are sometimes confused with folk traditions. Almost a million people, in turn, consider themselves irreligious, of which around seventy thousand are atheists and just over seven thousand are agnostics.