Western Christianity was introduced to the province of
Lusitania, what is now Portugal under the
Roman Empire in the first half of the first millennium AD. The present-day Portuguese state was founded in 1139 by
King Afonso Henriques during the
Reconquista, in which the Christian kingdoms of the northern
Iberian Peninsula reconquered the South from the
Cordoba Caliphate of the
Sunni Muslim Moors.
Crusaders from other Catholic realms aided the reconquest, which Portugal finished in 1249 with the conquest of
Algarve. After the
Fall of Constantinople to the
Ottoman Empire,
Portuguese discoveries in the
Age of Exploration, would lead to the establishment of the
Portuguese Empire from the early 15th century onwards, spreading Catholicism to Portuguese colonies in
Ceuta on the
Barbary coast of North Africa,
Sub-Saharan Africa, the
East Indies in
Asia, and
South America. The
Lusophone countries of
Angola,
Brazil,
Cape Verde,
Mozambique,
São Tomé and Príncipe, and
Timor-Leste all have Catholic majorities as a result. The
Primate of the East Indies based in the
Portuguese Goa of early-
modern India was part of the
Portuguese Empire in the East, and a significant
Latin Christian minority remains in the Indian subcontinent, the most prominent of which are
Goan Catholics.
Bombay East Indian Christians,
Mangalorean Christians and
Latin Christians of Malabar are also among the lesser-known
New Christian converts in the Eastern hemisphere. The church supported the
Miguelist faction during the
Liberal Wars of 1828-1834. In 1910, the
Portuguese Republic abolished the policy of having the
Latin Church as the
state religion, in favour of
secularism. However, the right-wing
Salazar regime from 1932 to 1974 re-established Catholicism as the state religion, which had repercussions such as the
Annexation of Goa and Damaon, after which the system was subsequently disestablished along with the regime.
Sexual abuse In 2021 the Portuguese Catholic Bishops' Conference established an independent committee for the investigation of any
sexual abuse of minors within the Portuguese church, the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in Portugal began its work in January 2022 and issued its final report in February 2023. The commission was led by child psychologist Pedro Strecht who headed a 'multidisciplinary and gender-balanced' investigative panel which sought participation from members of the public who had experienced abuse in institutions run by the Church, such as parishes, schools, orphanages or hospitals, or who had otherwise been abused at the hands of a minister or employee of the Church. The commission received 564 testimonies, of which it held 512 to be verified, relating to incidents of abuse which occurred between 1950 and the commission's establishment in 2021. From these testimonies the Commission identified that around 77% of alleged perpetrators were priests with 57% of victims as males, most of whom aged between 10 and 14. Commission president Strecht extrapolated that the figure of victims likely stood at around 5000 individuals, and further proposed that as many 100 priests in active ministry as of February 2023 had been credibly accused of abuse. He stated that the commission would submit the names of these priests to the Church and public prosecutor in due course. Following the report's publication, 25 serving priests have been reported to the office of public prosecutions. The president of the Portuguese Catholic Bishops' Conference, Josè Ornelas, responded to the report's publication with words of apology and confirmed the Portuguese bishops' intention to implement the report's recommendations. ==Organization==