Evangelicals are swooping on long-ignored regions of Mexico



POPE BENEDICT XVI will arrive in Mexico on March 23rd to spend three days preaching mainly to the converted. Mexico is one of the world's great Catholic bastions: 83% of its 112m people are loyal to the Vatican, and Mexico City's Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe vies with St Peter's in Rome as the world's most-visited Catholic church. The Pope will stay in Guanajuato, Mexico's most devout state, where 94% of the population is Catholic. Yet outside Guanajuato, the Vatican's grip is weakening. The share of Mexicans saying they are Catholic fell by five percentage points in the decade to 2010. In 1970 the figure was 96%. Part of the decline is the result of a falling birth rate; the average family now has just over two children, so the growth of Catholicism is slower. But many of these souls have been claimed by evangelical Christianity, often by offering food and providing services in areas where neither the church nor the state has much presence.