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Portugal Non-Catholic Religious Groups
For most of Portugal's history, few non-Catholics lived
in
the country; those who did could not practice their
religion
freely. Until the constitution of 1976 was enacted, laws
restricted the activities of non-Catholics. By the early
1990s,
only some 50,000 to 60,000 Protestants lived in Portugal,
about 1
percent of the total population. They had been kept out of
the
country for three centuries by the Inquisition. However,
the
British who began settling in Portugal in the nineteenth
century
brought their religions with them. Most belonged to the
Church of
England, but others were Methodists, Congregationalists,
Baptists, and Presbyterians. Protestantism remained
largely
confined to the foreign communities. The 1950s and 1960s
saw the
arrival of Pentecostals, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses,
all of
whom increased in numbers more rapidly than the earlier
arrivals
did. All groups, however, were hampered by prohibitions
and
restrictions against the free exercise of their religions,
especially missionary activities.
These restrictions were lifted after the Revolution of
1974.
The constitution of 1976 guarantees all religions the
right to
practice their faith. Protestant groups came to be
recognized as
legal entities with the right to assemble. Portuguese who
were
both Protestant and conscientious objectors had the right
to
apply for alternative military service. The Roman Catholic
Church, however, still sought to place barriers in the way
of
Protestant missionary activities.
The Jewish community in Portugal numbered between 500
and
1,000 as of the early 1990s. The community was
concentrated in
Lisbon, and many of its members were foreigners. The
persecution
of Portuguese Jewry had been so intense that until recent
decades
Portugal had no synagogue or even regular Jewish religious
services. The few Jewish Portuguese were hence isolated
from the
main currents of Judaism. Their community began to revive
when
larger numbers of foreign Jews (embassy personnel,
business
people, and technicians) began coming to Portugal in the
1960s
and 1970s. In northern Portugal, there were a few villages
of
Marranos, descendants of Jews who converted to
Christianity to
avoid persecution and whose religion was a mixture of
Judaism and
Christianity. Portugal's Muslim community consisted of a
small
number of immigrants from Portugal's former colonies in
Southern
Africa, and larger numbers of recent immigrant workers
from
Northern Africa, mainly Morocco.
Data as of January 1993
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