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
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or situation:
“When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won’t be just our child’s feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well—from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.... The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)