Religion and History in Sao Tome and Principe

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Sao Tome and Principe, two small volcanic islands off the coast of Gabon, is Africa's second-smallest country by population and one of its most solidly Christian, a legacy of nearly five centuries as a Portuguese colony built on the labor of enslaved Africans brought to work its cocoa and sugar plantations. Roman Catholicism remains the largest tradition, though Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, along with the locally rooted New Apostolic Church, have grown steadily since the country's 1975 independence.

Religious observance in Sao Tome and Principe blends closely with the islands' Creole culture, itself a product of Portuguese, West African and Angolan influences carried by the enslaved and free populations who settled the archipelago, and church feast days remain among the country's most widely observed public occasions, outlasting the political instability of the 1990s and 2000s, including several changes of government and a brief 2003 coup that was reversed within a week.