The Roman Catholic church has a dominant presence in religion in Bolivia.

While a vast majority of Bolivians are Catholic and Christian, a much smaller portion of the population participates actively. In the decades following the Second Vatican Council

Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...

 (1962-65), the church tried to make religion a more active force in social life.

A 2008 survey for Americas Barometer, with 3,003 respondents and an error (+/- 1,8% ) returned these results:

Religion	Percentage	Notes
Catholic	81.6%
Evangelic	10.3%	Pentecostal, Non-Catholic Charismatic
No religion	3.3%	Secular, Atheist
Protestant	2.6%	Historic Protestant - Adventist, Bautist, Calvinist, Salvation Army, Lutheran, Methodist, Nazarene, Presbiterian
Mormon and Jehova's Witness	1.7%
Non Christian	0.4%	Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist
Traditional religions	0.1%	Native religions

Church and State

Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

’s constitution

Constitution

A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...

 mandates religious freedom, and the government has no record of suppressing any religious groups. However, some Catholic priests are supported by government pensions, in exchange for land that the church ceded to the government in the past. Only Roman Catholic religious instruction is provided in the country’s public schools, but students are not required to attend religious sessions. Roman Catholic is the main religion in bolivia, but there is also christianity from the conquistadors of spain.

Colonial era

Christianity had its roots in the Spanish conquest; priests accompanied the first military expeditions. The church's organization, personnel, and role in society were all defined early in the colonial era. Pope Julius III

Pope Julius III

Pope Julius III , born Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, was Pope from 7 February 1550 to 1555....

 created the La Plata bishopric in 1552; this was followed by those of La Paz

La Paz

Nuestra Señora de La Paz is the administrative capital of Bolivia, as well as the departmental capital of the La Paz Department, and the second largest city in the country after Santa Cruz de la Sierra...

 and Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz de la Sierra

Santa Cruz de la Sierra, commonly known as Santa Cruz, is the capital of the Santa Cruz department in eastern Bolivia and the largest city in the country...

 early in the seventeenth century. A plethora of religious orders — Franciscans, Mercedarians, Dominicans

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

, and Jesuits were the most prominent — joined diocesan priests in the colonial ministry. The clergy were largely of European origin. The few mestizos who joined the ranks were usually admitted as lay brothers rather than priests.

The patronato real (an agreement between the Catholic Church and the Spanish crown) gave the Spanish throne and, by extension, the colonial authorities significant powers in church affairs. Appointments of clergy and bishops normally required the approval of civil authorities. The relationship between church and state was mutual and intimate; each institution had great influence on the other's affairs. In a society where separation from the religious ministrations of the church was unthinkable, the church had great moral influence.

In addition, the colonial church was an extremely wealthy institution. Religious organizations not only owned extensive tracts of land but also served as quasi-official moneylenders to the landed elite and high-ranking officeholders. By the end of the colonial era, a combination of money lending and shrewd real estate investments had made the church the dominant financial power in Bolivia.

Independence

Independence brought some changes to Bolivian church-state relations. The Roman Catholic Church retained its status as the nation's sole religion. Except for a brief period during the 1870s, this pattern continued throughout the nineteenth century. At the same time, however, the new Bolivian government quickly asserted its primacy over the church. In 1826 President Antonio José de Sucre Alcalá (1825-28) took control over the collection of church tithes, closed all monasteries with fewer than twelve persons, and seized church lands. These actions permanently weakened the church as a political force.

Further changes occurred in the twentieth century. In 1906 the government proclaimed religious toleration and permitted the establishment of non-Roman Catholic churches. In 1961 the government relinquished its right under the patronato nacional (the successor to the patronato real) to mediate in church affairs. No longer could the government have a voice in conciliar decrees, briefs, or bulls that the pope issued or play a role in the selection of high-ranking church officials. The Constitution of 1967 grants official status to the Roman Catholic Church but also guarantees the public exercise of all other religions.

Freed from direct government control, the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s attempted to establish a more visible presence in Bolivian society. The country's bishops, organized into the Bolivian Bishops Conference ("Conferencia Episcopal Boliviana"), issued pastoral letters condemning the living conditions of peasants and workers. The bishops established development centers, research organizations, and commissions to address these problems. Many priests, brothers, and sisters took a more direct political stance. The so-called miner priests--oblates assigned to parishes in mining communities--actively defended workers' rights. This experience led to the formation in 1968 of Church and Society in Latin America-Bolivia (Iglesia y Sociedad en América Latina-Bolivia -- ISAL-Bolivia). Employing a Marxist analysis of society, ISAL-Bolivia endorsed socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 as the only means of achieving justice

Justice

Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...

.

The political stance of ISAL-Bolivia and others engendered a sharp response from the bishops. Shortly after ISAL-Bolivia contended that capitalism had contaminated the church, the CEB stripped the organization of its official Catholic status. In a subsequent pastoral letter, the bishops stated that although priests had an obligation to promote needed social change, they could not identify with specific political parties or movements. The church hierarchy's caution was evident in its handling of the Bolivian Justice and Peace Commission. Established in 1973 as a research arm of the episcopate, the commission quickly became active in defending the rights of political prisoners of the military government led by Colonel Hugo Banzer Suárez. The government accused the commission of promoting subversive propaganda and deported the organization's key personnel. In their response, the bishops endorsed the commission's human rights agenda but then suspended its operations for two years. The reconstituted commission operated under tighter episcopal controls than did its predecessor.

The return of democracy in the 1980s presented the church with a new set of challenges. Although the CEB recognized that the economic crisis of the early and mid-1980s required strong measures, it publicly questioned the wisdom of the stabilization policies adopted in 1985 by President Víctor Paz Estenssoro. Endorsing the position adopted at the Latin American Bishops Conference in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979, the CEB suggested that Paz Estenssoro's New Economic Policy (Nueva Política Económica--NPE) would generate increasing levels of inequality in society. The bishops followed up this pastoral letter by mediating negotiations in 1986 between the government and the Bolivian Labor Federation (Central Obrera Boliviana).

In 1986 the Roman Catholic Church was organized into four archdioceses (La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba

Cochabamba

Cochabamba is a city in central Bolivia, located in a valley bearing the same name in the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cochabamba Department and is the fourth largest city in Bolivia with an urban population of 608,276 and a metropolitan population of more than 1,000,000 people...

, and Sucre

Sucre

Sucre, also known historically as Charcas, La Plata and Chuquisaca is the constitutional capital of Bolivia and the capital of the department of Chuquisaca. Located in the south-central part of the country, Sucre lies at an elevation of 2750m...

), four dioceses, two territorial prelatures, and six apostolic vicariates. The bishops had at their disposal approximately 750 priests, most of whom were foreigners. The paucity of priests significantly hampered church activities. For example, the archdiocese of Sucre only had sixty-two priests to attend to the needs of an estimated 532,000 Catholics dispersed over 50,000 square kilometers.

Because of the church's weak rural presence, the vast majority of Indians followed their own brand of folk-Catholicism far removed from orthodoxy. Indians saw no inconsistency in mixing modern technology and medicine with folk curers or indigenous ritual with professed Roman Catholicism. Indigenous rituals and fragments of Roman Catholic worship were interwoven in the elaborate fiestas that were the focus of social life.

The Quechua and Aymara pantheon was a mix of Christian and preconquest spirits and beings. A deity like the virginal daughter of the Inca sun god was transmuted into a Catholic figure, in this case the Virgin Mary. Many of the supernaturals were linked to a specific place, such as lake and mountain spirits. The earth mother, Pachamama

Pachamama

Pachamama is a goddess revered by the indigenous people of the Andes. Pachamama is usually translated as Mother Earth, but a more literal translation would be "Mother world"...

, and fertility rituals played a prominent role. In the 1980s, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, and members of a variety of Pentecostal denominations gained increasing numbers of adherents among the rural and urban squatter populations. Because these denominations tended to emphasize individual salvation and to deemphasize social and political issues, many leftists charged that they were agents of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 government. In May 1989, left-wing terrorists murdered two Mormon missionaries from the United States who had been working in a squatter community near La Paz.

Religions besides Catholicism

Bolivia has an active Protestant minority of various groups, especially Evangelical Methodists. Other denominations represented in Bolivia included Mennonites and Anglicanism

Anglicanism

Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...

. In 1980s Mormons

Mormons

The Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, a religion started by Joseph Smith during the American Second Great Awakening. A vast majority of Mormons are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while a minority are members of other independent churches....

, Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...

, Seventh-day Adventists, and various Pentecostal denominations gained increasing adherents. The Bahá'í Faith

Bahá'í Faith

The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....

 has members in more than 5,500 localities. Bolivia also has a small Jewish community, which had not reported any discrimination. In 1988 the government stated that numerous religious groups were operating in Bolivia illegally, but its attempt to expel some foreign members of the Hare Krishna

International Society for Krishna Consciousness

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness , known colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement, is a Gaudiya Vaishnava religious organization. It was founded in 1966 in New York City by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada...

movement in 1986 was overturned by the Supreme Court of Justice. Now Hare Krishna is legally established in Bolivia as an educational institution.

No Religion

A 2007 Gallup poll asking "Is religion important in your life?" showed 12% of respondents answering "No". The 2008 survey done by the Americas Barometer had 3.3 % of participants indicating "no religion". A later survey, from February 2010, published in the newspaper La Prensa, but performed only in the capitals of El Alto, La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, showed 5% of respondents professing to have no religion.