The number of Catholics has increased, especially in Africa, Asia and the Americas; priestly vocations have decreased. This is the overview presented by the data from the 2023 Holy See Yearbook and the 2021 Church Statistical Yearbook.
(Vatican News Network)The “Vatican Yearbook 2023” and “Ecclesiastical Yearbook 2021” compiled by the Central Statistical Office of the Church of the State Council have recently been published by Vatican Books Publishing House and are now available in bookstores.
From the data of the Holy See Annals, we can know the relevant information about the life of the global Catholic Church from December 1, 2021 to November 30, 2022. To illustrate: During this period, four dioceses were established, three of the Latin rite and one of the Oriental rite; two dioceses were merged into one diocese; and one territorial diocese was elevated to diocese.
The Statistical Yearbook of the Church provides an overview of the pastoral action of the Catholic Church in 3,030 ecclesiastical jurisdictions around the world. Between 2020 and 2021, the number of baptized Catholics worldwide will increase from 1.36 billion to 1.378 billion. This increase is slightly smaller than the proportion of global population growth. The growth of Catholics varies across continents: Africa has the highest increase, followed by the Americas, followed by Asia and flat in Europe.
In 2021, global Catholics make up 17.67% of the world’s total population. As far as the proportion of Catholics in the local population is concerned, it is 64.1% in the Americas, 39.6% in Europe, 25.9% in Oceania, 19.4% in Africa and 3.3% in Asia.
Regarding the data on clergy, in 2021, there are 462,388 clergy, including 5,340 bishops, 407,872 priests, and 49,176 lifelong deacons. Compared to the 2020 figures, there is a total decrease of 0.39% in the clergy. During this period, while the number of bishops and priests worldwide has decreased slightly, the number of tenured deacons in dioceses and religious orders has increased significantly and is encouraging.
In terms of religious members, the number of non-priests in religious orders worldwide will decrease from 50,569 in 2020 to 49,774 in 2021, a negative growth of 1.6%. There will be a total of 608,958 nuns in the world in 2021, a negative growth of 1.7% compared to 2020.
As for the trend of the number of seminarians around the world, it will continue to decline from 2013 to 2021, and will drop to 109,895 in 2021. With the exception of Africa, the number of seminarians has decreased on all continents of the world.
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