Present Situation
The CIA World Factbook reports that 85% of the population of Puerto Rico is Roman Catholic, with the remaining 15% divided among Protestantism, Islam, and Judaism. Some people put the Catholic percentage at 70% or more. Approximately 3,400,000 Puerto Ricans practice Catholicism. Administratively, the Catholic Church in Puerto Rico is divided into five dioceses and one archdiocese.
Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth, the world's oldest colony. "Its deepest roots are Latino", Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves of San Juan said in 2007, "U.S. rule began in 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American War, but indigenous, African and Spanish cultures "shaped its identity for 400 years" and that influence "cannot be undone overnight." The shift from Spanish to U.S. rule brought a wave of anti-Catholic sentiment that led to the prohibition of the processions that are a mainstay of Latin American religious practice, as well as government policies that prohibited schools from teaching in Spanish. Since the approval of a Puerto Rican Constitution in 1952, however, popular religious traditions such as processions and festivals honoring communities' patron saints have taken root again.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholicism In Puerto Rico
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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