23-June-2003 -- Catholic World News Brief
NEW ANNUARIO SHOWS WORLD CATHOLIC POPULATION STABLE
Vatican , Jun. 23 (CWNews.com) - The latest edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the statistical directory of the worldwide Catholic Church, shows the Catholic population stable, with some vigorous growth in Africa and Asia, but erosion in Europe and North America.
The percentage of Catholics among the world's people is holding at 17.33 percent-- the same for 2001 (the last year for which full statistics are available) as for 2000, but slightly down from 17.99 percent in 1978.
The latest Annuario, a 500-page volume with figures for each diocese and religious order in the world, shows that as of December 31, 2001, there were 4,649 bishops in the world; 405,067 priests; 29,204 deacons; 54,970 monks; 792,317 nuns; 139,078 lay missionaries; and 2,813,252 catechists. Although the Catholic population was stable on a worldwide basis, there were noteworthy differences across the continents. In Africa, for example, the Catholic population has grown by 148 percent from 1978 to 2001, while the overall population growth was only 83 percent. In 1978, Africa accounted for 7.2 percent of the world's Catholics; that figure has soared to 12.8 percent. By contrast, Europe was home to 35 percent of the world's Catholic population in 1978; now that number is 26.5 percent, and still falling.
The Annuario clearly illustrates the shortage in priestly vocations. In 1978 there was one priest for every 1,797 baptized Catholics in the world; today there is one priest for every 2,619. Europe still has the heaviest representation of priests, with one for every 1,357 faithful; in Africa that number is 4,847, and in the Americas-- which are treated as one unit-- it is 4,359. In some parts of the world-- most notably Africa, Asia, and Central America-- the number of seminarians training for the priesthood is more than adequate to replace the ranks of today's priests. In North America the comparatively empty seminaries presage a further decline in the number of priests. In Europe overall the number of seminarians is just enough to replace retiring priests, but there are radically differences from one country to another, with Poland having nearly twice as many seminarians per active priest as Italy does.
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