Vatican Insider
December 22, 2011
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/news/detail/articolo/religioni-religions-religiones-11040/
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| Mel Gibson in "The Passion" |
Christianity continues to be the most widespread religion in the world. Around one-third of the Earth's population - 2.18 billion people - are classified as "Christian" in a study by The Pew Forum, a prominent American research center. On the same date, Muslims totaled about 1.6 billion and represented 23.4% of the world's population.
The study - reported by the missionary agency AsiaNews and cited by Radio Vaticana - shows that Catholics make up 50.1% of Christians, Protestants 37%, Orthodox 12%, and the rest are followers of various denominations.
Globally, Christians represent about the same percentage of the population as one hundred years ago. In the last century, in fact, their number nearly quadrupled, rising from 600 million to more than two billion. But in the same period of time, worldwide population grew from 1.8 to 6.9 billion. As a result, the percentage of Christians remained nearly invariant: it was 35% of the worldwide population then, and is now 32%.
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