Over 2 million Brazilian Christian ‘followers’ of Israeli tourism on Facebook

The number of Brazilians who have “liked” Israel’s Ministry of Tourism two Facebook profiles in Portuguese exceeds 2 million.

Israeli officials in Brazil say the achievement is the result of a strategy that puts a strong focus on countries like Brazil, which has one of the world’s largest Christian populations.

Today, the ministry’s “Holy Land Spirit” profile dedicated to evangelicals has nearly 1.22 million followers, and the number of Catholic followers of the “Holy Land Pilgrimage” page is over 1.17 million. Evangelicals make up 22 percent and Catholics 65 percent of Brazil’s population of 204 million. A former Portuguese colony, Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world.

“Because everything in the Bible happened in Israel, nothing is more natural than to pay attention to this [Christian] market,” says Renata Cohen, general director of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism in Brazil, in an interview with O Globo newspaper on Thursday.

Israel received some 60,000 Brazilian tourists in 2015.

Brazil is home to some 120,000 Jews.

— JTA