SÃO PAULO – Unmarried partners living together in Brazil exceeded legally and religiously married couples for the first time, showed a specific part of the 2022 census released on Nov. 5 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

According to the census, in 2022 38.9 percent of the Brazilian couples had cohabiting unions, while 37.9 percent were legally and religiously married couples.

That is a significant transformation in only a couple of decades. In 2000, 49.4 percent of the unions had civil and religious legitimacy, while informal relationships represented 28.6 percent. In 1970, 64.5 percent of the couples were married.

Between 2000-2022, the proportion of civil marriages only (without a corresponding religious marriage) grew from 17.5 percent to 20.5 percent. The proportion of religious marriages only fell from 4.4 percent to 2.6 percent. According to IBGE, 51.3 percent of Brazilians older than 10 have a marital union.

The census demonstrates that informal unions are more common among young people. The proportion of Brazilians under 39 in relationships of that kind is equal to 56.2 percent. Formal marriages predominate among people over 40, corresponding to 76.3 percent.

Couples with lower income tend to have informal unions. Among Brazilian couples with a household per capita income of half a minimum age (about $141) or less, 51.2 percent of the unions are unofficial.

The proportion of civil and religious marriages among couples with a household per capita income of five minimum wages or more ($1,415) corresponds to 54.3 percent.

Most Indigenous (56 percent) and Black couples (46.1 percent) have cohabitation unions. Among whites, civil and religious marriages prevail, with 46 percent of the cases.

According to Luciene Longo, IBGE’s investigation analyst, the results show that socioeconomic conditions play a significant role in that.

“Cohabitation unions were more common among people in more precarious socioeconomic conditions, as those in the lower per capita household income segments were more represented in this type of union,” she told the agency’s website.

According to auxiliary bishop Reginei Modolo of the Archdiocese of Curitiba, who is a member of the Bishops’ Conference’s Commission for Life and Family, one of the reasons for the decline of legal and religious marriages in Brazil was the emergence of the legal figure of the stable union, comparable to the common-law marriage in other countries.

The 1988 Constitution created that possibility, which ended up being regulated by additional legislation and became more common after 2002. Stable unions give couples the same rights of a civil marriage and became an easy way of getting access to social and private benefits.

“With that new figure, civil marriage became almost unnecessary in the eyes of many people. The concerns that used to lead many to get officially married are over now,” Modolo, known as Zico, told Crux.

Given that the Brazilian Church orientates couples to get legally married before the religious ceremony, the percentage of religious marriages naturally fell too, he added.

Another problem, Zico said, is that getting married became too expensive over the years. Not because of the fees involved, but due to the development of a real industry involving every aspect of a wedding, from the church decoration to the props distributed during the party.

“The costs can be very high, because the wedding became a social event of great magnitude,” Zico said.

The Church’s challenge is to conceive ways of incentivizing people to leave those ideas behind, he said.

Milene Angeleli, who directs with her husband Cloves the Family Pastoral Ministry in Paraná state, said it’s noticeable that the number of weddings has been falling over the years. But there are variations, she said.

“In smaller cities, that trend is less strong than in the large ones,” she told Crux.

Dealing with stable unions requires a slow and steady effort. For Angeleli, it’s part of the process of evangelization.

“We have to explain to those couples that they can be legally ‘married,’ but they haven’t received the sacrament – which is God’s blessing over their union,” she said.

The effort has produced many fruits over the past three years, Angeleli said. Many couples end up deciding to legitimate their unions and the parishes offer a special formation class for them.

But the economic element keeps being a problem.

“My city, Assis Chateaubriand, has about 37,000 inhabitants. Most people end up knowing when a couple will get married. And it became a competition over who throws the best party,” she said.

The local bishop, a couple of years ago, forbade promoters and party organizers to operate inside the churches. Members of the Family Pastoral began to help to organize the decoration.

“We insist with the couples that the sacrament is what really matters,” Angeleli said. But many people still decide not to get married due to the impossibility of having a grandiose ceremony.

One of the solutions for already cohabiting couples are community weddings. Angeleli said they hold them once a year. About 10 couples each year – almost all of them in stable unions – have their wedding together in the church.

“It’s something that reduces the costs for them,” she claimed.

Zico explained that in the Archdiocese of Curitiba it’s perceptible that more couples have been looking for a religious wedding now than in the past. It has to do with a special effort to incentivize the Family Pastoral Ministry and pastoral activities with Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia.

“Francis said that we should be closer to couples that express the will of building a family. When it’s authentic, there are important values that must be incentivized. And we must tell them the importance of the sacrament,” he said.

In the exhortation, Francis had already warned the Church about the impact of the “wedding industry” as well.

“A personalized marriage catechesis can be the answer for the challenge of leading people to adequately understand that the sacrament is the central element, and not the social dimension of the event,” Zico said.