History 2[+or less 3].0

Pope Francis is not only the first Jesuit Pope, but the first from the Americas.  Born in Buenos Aires, the Pope represents the immense Catholic population in Latin America.

It makes sense that Europe has one of the highest rates of Catholicism in the world because Christianity originated in Europe. Also, I believe that it makes sense that more than half of the Catholic population spread southward along the prime meridian to Africa. However, I don't understand how when Catholicism spread overseas, it didn't go to North America before it went to Latin America. So I did some research on that and Catholicism actually spread to the caribbean which is southeast of the United States and it spread mostly towards South America rather than up to North America. However, that doesn't explain why South America has a higher Catholic percentage than Europe. All I know is that Europe use to have a higher percentage of Catholics over Latin America about a century ago but now, Latin America has more Catholics.

it makes sense that south America has a large number of Catholics, as it was colonized by Portugal and Spain, which were two of the largest and most constantly catholic countries on earth.