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Rapid growth in the Hispanic population in Tucson and across the country is bringing a more spirit-filled, charismatic form of Christianity to the United States, a new study says.

Hispanics are changing the nation's religious landscape, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church, according to the study released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Spirit-filled or renewalist movements, including divine healing and direct revelations from God, are a style of worship favored more by Hispanics than by their non-Hispanic counterparts in the national survey.

Also, many of the Hispanics joining evangelical churches are Catholic converts who say they want a more direct, personal experience with God, said the survey, titled "Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion."

The public-opinion survey collected information from more than 4,600 interviews, and its authors said it was one of the largest data-collection efforts conducted on this subject.

"Our young people coming up — cold, traditional religion is just not going to cut it for them. They want to walk with the Lord," said Samuel Santana, senior pastor at New Life Ministries/Ministerios Vida Nueva, a predominantly Hispanic church on Tucson's South Side. Santana thought the study's observations were on target with what he has observed in his own congregation.

Santana's church, which has two Spanish services and one in English each weekend, is a Pentecostal church. By the classic definition, a Pentecostal is someone who has a undergone a "baptism of the Holy Spirit," usually accompanied by speaking in tongues. Santana describes Pentecostalism as "being sensitive to the spirit of God in our daily walk."

His church, like the Hispanic population, has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years — from 100 people in 1999 to its current flock of 1,200 regular Sunday worshippers.

"It is not something that is hocus-pocus; it's a very practical type of thing," Santana said. "The thing for us is not so much religion but more of a relationship with Christ.

"Probably the best way to identify us is spirit-filled. We do believe in speaking in tongues as a prayer language. That is one of the gifts given to Christians. The Lord has given us a more intimate prayer language."

The study also found that religion and politics are intertwined for Hispanics, said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center. Suro noted that Hispanics who are evangelicals are twice as likely as those who are Catholics to identify with the Republican Party. Hispanic Catholics are much more likely than Hispanic evangelicals to identify with the Democratic Party. The study's authors said higher turnout among Hispanic evangelicals helped President Bush gain votes between the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Hispanics make up about 32 percent of Pima County's population and about 28.5 percent of Arizona's population, U.S. Census data show. Pinpointing Hispanic percentages in the local Catholic Church is difficult because of the number of illegal immigrants who live here, said Ruben Davalos, director of evangelization and Hispanic ministry for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson.

But it's clear that the Hispanic presence is growing among local Catholic churches. Five years ago, 30 percent to 40 percent of the diocese's 74 parishes had Spanish services. Now it's closer to 90 percent, Davalos said.

"There are parishes that used to have four or five Masses in English and one in Spanish, and now those parishes have four Masses in Spanish and one in English," he said.

About 22 million of the nation's 66 million Catholics are Hispanic. They have accounted for 71 percent of the U.S. Catholic Church's growth since 1960. The study projects that the Hispanic share will continue climbing for decades. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says that if current growth continues, Hispanics will make up a majority of American Catholics by 2020.

But one of the study's most significant findings is that more than half of Hispanic Catholics identify themselves as charismatics, compared with only one-eighth of non-Hispanic Catholics. Charismatic typically means showing an emotional response to the Holy Spirit.

"Spirit-filled religiosity does pose a contrast to what have been the dominant characteristics of the Catholic Church in the United States at least for the last generation," said Suro, of the Pew Hispanic Center. "There will be a process of change."

The changes reflect a dynamic movement of Pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa, said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Not surprisingly, immigrants coming to the United States from those regions are bringing those practices with them and helping to transform American Christianity, he said.

Davalos said he wasn't certain what percentage of local Hispanic Catholics would identify themselves as charismatic, though nearly every parish has a charismatic prayer group.

"I think it's a well-known fact that due to the religiosity and deep conviction of Hispanics, we bring an element of true faith, belief in miracles and in intervention of God and the saints and the Virgin to help us through the chores of life," Davalos said. "It's a deeper, different type of faith due to our culture."

Davalos added that Catholic leaders are aware of the need for more personalization of the faith experience among their Hispanic worshippers. That's often a difficult task in Catholic churches that have 2,000 member families and just one or two priests. But the current effort is to increase lay leadership that would improve the ratio of parishioners to leaders, he said.