Immigration said to keep number of Hispanic Catholics in U.S. steady

Published: 2005-12-20

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Despite the number of Hispanics who are joining evangelical Protestant churches, the percentage of Hispanics in the U.S. who are Catholic has remained steady at 70 percent, said an expert in Latino population trends. This is the result of a "revolving door" by which the losses to other churches are compensated by the continued immigration flow from Latin America, said Gaston Espinosa, assistant religious studies professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. "Latino Catholics are more numerous than all mainline white Protestants," he said. There are about 29 million Latino Catholics and 22 million mainline white Protestants, he said. Espinosa is the research director for the Hispanic Churches and American Public Life Project, an ecumenically sponsored three-year survey of almost 3,000 Hispanics nationwide to determine the influence of religion on their personal and public lives. He gave a Dec. 12 seminar for journalists in Washington on Latino demographic trends in religion and politics.

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