VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service – Bulletin
edited by the Central Office of Church Statistics of the Secretariat of State
The Pontifical Yearbook 2017 and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2015, compiled and edited by the Central Office of Church Statistics, are currently being distributed in bookstores.
Both volumes were printed by the Vatican Press.
The data shown in the Pontifical Yearbook enable some new developments to be inferred in relation to the life of the Catholic Church in the world, from 2016.
During this period four new Episcopal sees, one Eparchy, two Apostolic Exarchates and one Ordinariate were erected, and an Apostolic Exarchate was elevated to an Eparchy.
The statistical data of the Annuarium Statisticum, which refer to the year 2015, provide a summary overview of the main trends affecting the development of the Catholic Church in the world.
The following describes the evolving trends in the five year period just ended, both of baptized Catholics and of the clergy, professed men religious other than priests, professed women religious and the number of priestly vocations. In order to facilitate an appreciation of the genuine granularity of the data, the information is provided on a global level as well as for the single geographical area. On the contrary, to filter for effects attributable solely to demographic trends, the time series are related to the number of inhabitants in the area. In this paper, the data of 2015, as well as being systematically compared to those of the previous year, are also compared with those of the five-year period that began in 2010, with the aim of extrapolating the evolutionary dynamics prevalent in the medium term. The time frame considered covers a total of the last two years of the pontificate of Pope Benedict and the first three years of the pontificate of Pope Francis, with important information about the Catholic Church in the new millennium.
The number of baptized Catholics has continued to grow globally, from 1,272 million in 2014 to 1,285 million in 2015, with a relative increase of 1 %. This represents a total of 17.7% of the total population. If a medium term perspective is adopted, for example with reference to 2010, a more robust growth of 7.4% is shown. The dynamic of this increase varies from continent to continent: while, indeed, in Africa there is an increase of 19.4%, with the number of Catholics passing from 186 to 222 million in the same period, in Europe there is instead a situation of stability (in 2015 Catholics amounted to almost 286 million, whereas in 2019 there were just over 800 thousand fewer, and 1.3 million fewer compared to 2014). This stasis is due to the well-noted demographic situation, in which the population is in slight increase and is expected to decline sharply in the coming years. Intermediate situations with respect to the two described above are found in America and Asia, where the growth of Catholics is certainly important (respectively + 6.7% and 9.1%), but in line with the demographic trend of these two continents. Stagnation, obviously with lower values, is also typical of Oceania.
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