Catholic Global Presence Increasing


Now, this is good news...

The Vatican Publishing House released today a report on the Catholic Church's global presence, showing an increase in the Catholic population in 2008. Although the number of Catholics has risen globally, the study recorded a constant decline in priests, seminarians and non-ordained religious within Europe.

The recently released edition of the Statistical Yearbook of the Church compiled findings from 2000-2008, and documented that the number of Catholics in the world increased from 1.045 billion in 2000 to 1.166 billion in 2009, a growth of 11.54 percent.

Specifically in Africa, the Church grew by 33 percent, in Asia by 15.61 percent, in Oceania by 11.39 percent and in America by 10.93. The number of Catholics in Europe remained generally stable throughout the nine year period, increasing only by 1.17 percent.
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Comments

  1. Anonymous4/27/10, 10:31 PM

    This is great news!

    I hope you don't mind me asking why you did not mention Latin America, when just about every-one else, even Oceania, is included in the statistics?

    Thanks.
    Helen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jean Heimann4/28/10, 2:31 AM

    That's a good question, Helen, one that you might ask of those who conducted this study.

    Thanks for your comment!

    God bless you!

    ReplyDelete

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