IT IS the Day of the Dead in Malinalco, a small Mexican town. In its grand 16th century church a sprinkling of worshippers gathers to hear Mass. The cemetery across the main road is thronged with families bringing flowers and other offerings to leave at the graves of their departed relatives in a Christianised tradition whose origins date back beyond the Spanish conquest. This scene on November 2nd had a timeless quality, yet it is in some ways deceptive. For Latin America is undergoing significant religious change. Since around 1970 the world's most Roman Catholic continent has become steadily less so. This trend, much remarked, shows no sign of slowing down, according to an exhaustive new study by the Pew Research Centre, a self-described "fact tank" based in Washington.* This found that only 69% of adult Latin Americans are now Catholics, down from 92% in 1970. Protestants now account for 19%, up from 4%. Over the same period the share of those with no religious affiliation has grown from 1% to 8% - though most of these people still believe in God. Pew's study finds sharp variations from country to country. In four Central American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua - barely half of the population is still Catholic. Though 61% of Brazilian respondents say they are Catholic, 26% are now Protestant. In many other countries there are still firm Catholic majorities. Whatever their denomination, most Latin Americans remain deeply religious. Only Uruguay stands out as a bastion of secularism - a tradition dating back more than a century. Two things distinguish Latin American Protestantism. First, it is mainly a result of conversion (see chart). Second, two-thirds of Latin American Protestants define themselves as Pentecostal. Much more often than Catholics, they report having direct experience of the Holy Spirit, such as through exorcism or speaking in tongues. Indeed, the words "evangelical" and "Protestant" are used interchangeably in the region. Pew finds that Latin American Protestants are conservative on social and sexual issues, such as gay marriage and abortion. As Catholics become more liberal on such questions, that points to looming American-style "culture wars." What is causing the shift to Protestantism? Academics have several hypotheses. Some hold that Pentecostalism resonates with Amerindian and Afro-Latin American belief in the spirit world. But Pew finds that many Catholics as well as Protestants in Latin America hold such beliefs. A second theory stresses the appeal of Protestantism to urban migrants. David Stoll, an anthropologist at Middlebury College in Vermont, notes that such people have moved away from their extended families, attenuating their networks of support. Evangelical churches tend to operate on "family-like principles," he says. Pew finds that in Brazil, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic those who have converted to Protestantism are more likely to have moved within their country. In several countries Protestants are less likely than Catholics to have completed secondary school. But otherwise their demographic profiles are broadly similar. Urbanisation may have driven the switch to Protestantism most powerfully by offering freedom of religious choice. Evangelical churches, often led by entrepreneurial pastors, are better marketers than Catholic ones. More than half of converts say their new church contacted them rather than the other way around. According to Pew, those who switched tend to give as the main reasons a search for a more personal connection with God and a church that helps its members more. Since women tend to be more religious than men, the evangelicals" stress on teetotalism and condemnation of domestic violence is an attraction, too. Visible though Protestants have become in Latin America, the region remains strongly Catholic: it is home to more than 425m Catholics, or 40% of the world's total. And while Latin America's Protestants are more-active worshippers, its Catholics are better churchgoers than their co-religionists in Europe or the (non-Hispanic) United States. The Church has fought back against the evangelicals through the "charismatic" movement, its own version of Pentecostalism. It has a potential new attraction in Francis I, the first Latin American pope. He is wildly popular among Latin American Catholics. His open-mindedness and common touch might just keep more in the fold. Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region.