Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

is a predominantly Christian country. A survey in 2020 showed that 72.31% of the population were

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, 9.85% were

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

, 8.87% were other Christian, 5.5% followed another religion and 4.36% had no religious beliefs. Christianity was introduced to the country with the Spanish

conquistadors Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, ...

and centuries of missionaries. Like the rest of Latin America, the

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

of the conquest began to shift as aspects of indigenous, African and other spiritualities were acculturated. In recent decades, however,

Evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

churches, especially those denominations strongest in North America, have been gaining ground.

Denominations

The National Institute of Statistics and Census carried out a survey in 2022 and found that while most of the country followed Catholicism, the Episcopalian community had 11,000 members, the Methodist Church had 1,500 members, and the Lutheran Church had 1,000 members; other denominations included

Seventh-day Adventists The Seventh-day Adventist Church is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath, and i ...

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ch ...

, Jehovah’s Witnesses and

Pentecostals Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement

.US State Dept 2022 report
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Local Christian symbols

Like the rest of the continent, Panamanians celebrate Carnaval before Lent, and towns and regions have their own festivals at different parts of the year. The most famous of these is the festival of the Cristo Negro, the Black Jesus Christ, in the town of Portobelo in the

Colón Province Colón () is a province of Panama. The capital is the city of Colón. It covers an area of 4,575.5 sq.km, and the latest estimate of population (for 2019) is 294,060.Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censo, Panama. Overview This province h ...

on October 21. In Las Tablas and Herrera provinces, festivals are held for the Jesus Cristo de Azuero, named after the peninsula.

External links

Religious radio stations in Panama

References

{{South America topic, Christianity in

Denominations

Local Christian symbols

See also

External links

References