Being Portuguese, I never got to question the fact that I was a Catholic.

I was raised in a small town in southern Portugal where people were mostly catholic. Some of the residents were Mormons, Jehovah witnesses, or belonged to new churches that had bloomed in recent years. In the 80’s and early 90’s, the latter were a very small minority.

In this scenario, being baptized or attending school church were not exactly choices, but pieces of a well established social routine in one’s life. It was what, in English, we would call a given. I attended a public primary school where we had a holy cross in the classroom. There, as to all the Portuguese children, the Xmas story was told through Little Jesus. In early December we usually built a traditional “presepio” representing the story of the Holy Night. In Easter we were told about Ressurrection.

I left my small town when I was 17 to start college in Lisbon. Although mostly catholic, for the first time, I found some people who told me they were atheists or agnostics. They didn’t believe in God and they were not baptized. (To be sure, I knew well about “their existence” but now …they were among my friends!). Then I met a Jewish girl. Soon after that, I went to Croatia, and I came across Orthodox and Muslims. After leaving Portugal in 2002, now, I often find myself being the only Catholic among my peers.

This testimony may sound almost misplaced or mistimed.
The 90’s were the stage of some of the bloodiest contemporary religious battles in Europe. I am the daughter of a country born from the fight against the Muslims (XII a.c.), and that wrote its History through the catholic evangelization of remote indigenous populations (XV, XVII). Shouldn’t I be more aware about this religious plurality? Shouldn’t I know better?
It turns out that I knew. I certainly knew about “them.” The way I perceive “them” was probably what changed. I used to have two boxes: one, where I put the Catholics and another, where I put, at first, only the Mormons and the Jehovah witnesses and progressively, all the others.
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I now have a single big box.

Sometimes people ask me if I wouldn’t have liked to be given the option of choosing, or not, my own religion. And…to be honest….I really don’t see the point of the question. Religion is a belief. Nobody can force your own self to believe in something that you don’t want to. You may, of course, lie. And you may adopt all the practices of a certain religion, for your own or someone else’s convenience. But, truthfully, what you believe in, will always be your own choice, a choice that simply is not conditioned by any kind of “given” label. That is probably why religion is something personal.