Guatemala is the ‘most evangelical’ country in Latin America

The main faith confessions in Guatemala are evangelical churches and Roman Catholicism. Due to the lack of a national census for the last 14 years, we cannot exactly know how many members each church has.

However, it is known that there are six evangelical temples for each Roman Catholic chapel. The distance is even bigger if we count those who have not been officially registered.

The church´s registration must be done in the Ministry of Governance. According to association Soy502´s data, there are 2,790 churches registered since 1957, active in 250 towns throughout the country.

Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic church is organised in 15 jurisdictions, with 415 parishes and 835 priests. 43% of the priests are assigned to a specific parish.

The church´s registration must be done in the Ministry of Governance

Last October, the Christian comedian Jimmy Morales became president of the country. Morales defined himself as a man of faith.

HOW MANY EVANGELICAL CHURCHES ARE IN THE COUNTRY?

Although the Ministry of Governance has a record of the evangelical churches in Guatemala, it does not show the real presence of the evangelical faith in the country.

The Evangelical Alliance estimates that there are more than 40,000 churches in Guatemala, which would mean there could be up to 96 evangelical churches for each Roman Catholic parish.

According to Cesar Vazquez, President of the Guatemala Evangelical Alliance, these churches operate like a network, where the little churches are a part of a denomination, so that a little church or community is not officially registered in Ministry of Governance because it depends on a bigger church.

Jimmy Morales, the Christian president of Guatemala / AP

Those little churches are non-legal entities. Vazquez explained that only his denomination has 4,000 churches around the country.

The township with more evangelical churches is Guatemala city, followed by Mixco and Villanueva, the three most populated regions of the country.

Santa María Visitación Solola is the city with more evangelical churches per inhabitant: 2 churches for 2,759 inhabitants.

This map shows the distribution of the evangelical churches in Guatemala (in Spanish).