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Portugal

Also Known As Portuguese
Europe

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Portugal is predominantly Roman Catholic, and its most significant modern religious site, the shrine at Fatima, commemorates reported Marian apparitions to three shepherd children in 1917 and now draws millions of pilgrims annually, among the largest Marian pilgrimage sites in the world. Centuries earlier the country was part of Muslim ruled al-Andalus before its own Reconquista, completed in the thirteenth century, and Portuguese maritime expansion from the fifteenth century carried Catholic missionary activity, and the Portuguese language itself, to Africa, Brazil and parts of Asia. Portugal expelled its Jewish population in 1497, five years after Spain, ending a once significant Sephardic Jewish presence. Religious practice has declined among younger Portuguese in recent decades even as Fatima's pilgrimage tradition remains vigorous.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Disestablished 3
The 1976 constitution, adopted after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, disestablished Catholicism as official state religion and guarantees full religious freedom and separation of church and state.
State Funding Mechanism
Portugal funds no church directly from the state budget. Article 32, paragraph 6 of the 2001 Law on Religious Freedom lets an individual income tax filer direct 0.5 percent of their assessed IRS liability, a quota separate from and additional to the tax otherwise owed, for religious or charitable purposes to a registered church or religious community, provided that community has applied for and been granted the fiscal benefit; the Treasury transfers the designated funds to the beneficiary by 31 March of the following year. Registered religious communities also hold value added tax and property tax exemptions under other paragraphs of the same article, but no direct salary or subsidy payment. 4
Registration or Recognition Regime
The Religious Freedom Act, passed in April 2001, built a registration track for every religious community except the Roman Catholic Church, whose own standing rests instead on the country's separate Concordat; a community seeking registration submits its official name, distinguishable from any other religious body already on the register, its governing documents, the address of its main office, a statement of its religious purpose, an account of its assets and documentary evidence of its own doctrine and practice. 5
Concordat Basis
Concordat between the Holy See and the Portuguese Republic, signed in Rome on 18 May 2004 by Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano and Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, replacing the Concordat of 1940. Its thirty three articles cover religious education in schools, the legal status of religious institutions and the civil recognition of Catholic marriages. 6
Government
Capital
Lisbon 2
Government Type
semi-presidential republic 2
Sovereignty Status
Sovereign UN member state 2
Established Year
1143 2
1143 (Kingdom of Portugal recognized); 1 December 1640 (independence reestablished after 60 years of Spanish rule); 5 October 1910 (republic proclaimed)
Status
Legal Status
The 1976 constitution, adopted after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, disestablished Catholicism as official state religion and guarantees full religious freedom and separation of church and state. 3
Demographics
Religious Composition
About 80-85% Catholic; religious practice has declined among younger generations and religiously unaffiliated share has grown (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1
Geography
Latitude
39.4 degrees north 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Longitude
8.2 degrees west 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Location
Location of Portugal Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
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Religion and History in Portugal

Portugal remains majority Catholic, around 80 to 85 percent by most estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, though religious practice has declined among younger generations and a religiously unaffiliated minority has grown steadily. Portugal's Reconquista, completed earlier than Spain's with the Christian capture of the Algarve's last Muslim strongholds by 1249, ended over five centuries of Muslim Moorish rule that had left lasting architectural and cultural influence, particularly in the south. Fatima, a small town where three shepherd children reported Marian apparitions in 1917 during the First World War, became one of the Catholic world's most significant pilgrimage sites following the Church's eventual approval of the apparitions, drawing millions of pilgrims annually and gaining particular international attention after Pope John Paul II credited the Fatima intercession with his survival of a 1981 assassination attempt.

Portugal expelled its Jewish population in 1497 under pressure from Spain, shortly after Spain's own 1492 expulsion, though many Portuguese Jews were forced to convert rather than leave outright, creating a lasting converso and crypto-Jewish presence, some communities of which, notably in Belmonte, preserved secret Jewish practice for centuries before reconnecting openly with world Jewry in the twentieth century.

Fatima and the Politics of Catholic Establishment

Portugal's 1976 constitution, adopted after the 1974 Carnation Revolution ended decades of authoritarian rule, disestablished Catholicism as official state religion and guarantees full religious freedom, formally separating church and state though the Catholic Church retains considerable informal social influence, particularly in the more religiously conservative north, compared to the more secular Lisbon region and the historically more anti-clerical south.

Portugal's earlier First Republic, established in 1910, had pursued aggressive anticlerical policies including expelling religious orders and seizing church property, a rupture the subsequent authoritarian Estado Novo regime under Antonio Salazar partially reversed after 1933 by restoring close Church-state cooperation, including state recognition of the Fatima shrine's growing religious and national significance as a symbol of Catholic Portuguese identity during the dictatorship. Fatima's shrine complex, administered independently of the state under Church authority, has become one of the most economically and religiously significant sites in the country, and its message, including the reported prophecies known as the Three Secrets of Fatima, has generated ongoing theological and popular fascination extending well beyond Portugal's borders into the wider Catholic world.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Portugal directly: "at Radio Trans Europe in Sines, Portugal, aiming programs at Eastern Europe and the USSR in ten languages for twelve hours a week."

This source names Portugal directly: "1, 1971 first broadcast from Sines, Portugal."

This source names Portugal directly: "He sent his own son Henrique to study in Portugal, and in 1518 Henrique was elevated to bishop, one of the first sub-Saharan African Catholic bishops, giving Kongo's Christianity an institutional..."

Source Afonso I Of Kongo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Portugal directly: "and sending his own son Henrique to Portugal, who was elevated to bishop in 1518, one of the first sub-Saharan African Catholic bishops."

Source Afonso I Of Kongo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Bandua, Deities

This source names Portugal directly: "territory in what is now northern Portugal and Galicia, generally read as a god of war and of the fortified hilltop settlements, castros, where many of the inscriptions were found, and repeatedly..."

Source Jose d'EncarnacaoJose d'Encarnacao

About 80 to 85% Catholic; home to the Marian shrine at Fatima.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names Portugal directly: "Berg died on 1 October 1994 in Costa de Caparica, Portugal, without ever again appearing publicly under his own name in his later decades of leadership."

Source David Berg (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Portugal directly: "until his death on 1 October 1994 in Portugal."

Source David Berg (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Endovelicus, Deities

This source names Portugal directly: "near Terena in the Alentejo region of Portugal, which has yielded roughly ninety surviving Latin votive inscriptions dedicated to him, the largest such body of evidence for any native Iberian god."

Source Jose d'EncarnacaoJose d'Encarnacao

This source names Portugal directly: "New World territory between Spain and Portugal, that shaped European colonial claims in the Americas."

This source names Portugal directly: "children within the Catholic Church in Portugal from 1950 to 2022, but constituted and operated independently of the bishops who commissioned it."

Source Final Report of the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in PortugalIndependent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in Portugal (Pedro Strecht, chair)

This source names Portugal directly: "assassination of King Jose I of Portugal, an affair the Marquis of Pombal used to move against the Society of Jesus."

This source names Portugal directly: "opening in 1561 under King John III of Portugal and Cardinal Henrique, with Aleixo Dias Falcao as its first inquisitor, targeting New Christians suspected of Judaizing, Goan Catholics suspected of..."

Site of the event, at Fatima.

This source names Portugal directly: "and 1941 Missionary Statute between Portugal and the Holy See, through the Frelimo government's nationalization of church assets and suspension of all subsidies on independence in June 1975 under..."

Nabia, Deities

This source names Portugal directly: "the Nabao river near Tomar in Portugal, and several smaller streams carry a name descended from hers, so that her cult left a trace on the map that has outlasted every inscription naming her."

Source Jose d'EncarnacaoJose d'Encarnacao

This source names Portugal directly: "three shepherd children near Fatima, Portugal, beginning on this date in 1917."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source Final Report of the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in PortugalIndependent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in Portugal (Pedro Strecht, chair)

One of the six Christian kingdoms the Reconquista's own principal-parties fact names as party to it, alongside Asturias, Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre.

Source Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval SpainJoseph F. O'Callaghan

This source names Portugal directly: "captured the Muslim city of Lisbon in Portugal the same year."

Source God's War: A New History of the CrusadesChristopher Tyerman

This source names Portugal directly: "republication, reporting the death in Portugal of Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV and 49th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, at age 88."

The perpetrating crown; the tribunal was established and operated under Portuguese royal authority.

This source names Portugal directly: "In 1549, King Joao the Third of Portugal sent the first Jesuit mission to Brazil under Father Manuel da Nobrega, who sailed to Salvador da Bahia alongside the colony's first governor-general, Tome..."

This source names Portugal directly: "an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540 to 1750, Stanford University Press, 1996, is the authoritative modern academic history of the Jesuit order across the..."

This source names Portugal directly: "the 1917 Marian apparitions at Fatima, Portugal, including the previously unpublished text of the so called third secret."

Source The Message of FatimaCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faiththe holders' own account

The perpetrating crown; the expulsion was carried out under royal decree directed by the king's chief minister.

The perpetrating crown; the tribunal was established at the Portuguese king's own request and operated in the crown's name across its three mainland seats.

Trebaruna, Deities

This source names Portugal directly: "inscription in the Guarda district of Portugal, one of the longest and best preserved texts in the extinct Lusitanian language, which records a suovetaurilia style sacrifice naming several native..."

Source Jose d'EncarnacaoJose d'Encarnacao

Contains

Originated Here

Portugal's Jews were forcibly converted in 1497; its former conversos rebuilt open Jewish life in Amsterdam.

Related To

Many of those expelled crossed into Portugal, which expelled or forcibly converted its own Jews within five years.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
4. Lei n.o 16/2001, Lei da Liberdade Religiosa, Artigo 32.o (Beneficios Fiscais), Text
Informador (legal database), quoting Diario da Republica statute textView the Source
5. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
6. Portuguese Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Portal: Holy See Bilateral Relations
Government of Portugal, Portuguese Ministry for Foreign AffairsView the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
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