Objective: to characterize the understanding of leaders and members of the Catholic religion on pain of existing.
Method: 80 Catholics participated in the study. Data collection was carried out using the Religious Content Assessment Tool. The content analysis was carried out and arithmetic mean and standard deviation were calculated.
Results: the following categories emerged: length of affiliation, beginning of the religious practice and affiliation changes, responsibility for the actions and relationship with death, description of God, awareness of the existence of profound experiences, possibility of reward, increased faith in proximity to death, religion as an attempt to explain human limitations, relationship between religion and science and religion of the past and present in relation to science. On the instrument, the highest assigning items were: I believe that nature should be respected (9.96±0.19); I believe that all living beings deserve respect (9.70±0.67); make life worth living (9.70±0.78); my life is a transformation process (9.63±1.04) and I respect the diversity of people (9.56±0.91).
Conclusion: it was observed associations between the participants' perceptions and religious constructs, highlighting the need to approach the religious phenomenon as part of the human being and potential resource for management and modulation of the pain of existing.