FACTBOX - Pope Benedict visits Brazil

(Reuters) - Pope Benedict starting on Wednesday makes his first visit as Pope to Brazil, the country with the largest Roman Catholic population.

When the late Pope John Paul II visited Brazil in 1980, 89 percent of Brazilians identified themselves as Catholic. By 2000, when the last census was taken, the share of Catholics in the population had fallen to 74 percent.

Here are some facts on Brazil:

GEOGRAPHY: Brazil covers 3.3 million square miles (8.5 million square km), an area slightly larger than the continental United States. It accounts for about 45 percent of South America's land mass, including the massive Amazon basin.

-- As well as being home to the world's largest rain forest, it includes tropical highland savannah in the centre and lush farmland in the South. Brazil borders every country in South America except Chile and Ecuador.

POPULATION: 188.9 million people.

RELIGION: Although Brazil still has more Catholics than any other country in the world, with about 125 million, the percentage of believers that practice the Vatican's brand of Christianity has been dropping rapidly in the last three decades.

ETHNICITY: The majority of Brazilians comes from the ethnic integration of indigenous people, African slaves and European immigrants. There are also Arab and Japanese minorities and various indigenous groups.

LANGUAGE: Portuguese. Dozens of Indian languages are also spoken by the country's indigenous population.