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Catholic World News News Feature

Annuario shows slight rise in Catholic population February 01, 2005

The number of Catholic priests in the world rose in 2003, although the number of seminarians declined. That is one of the statistics furnished in the 2005 edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the official Vatican yearbook.

The new Annuario was presented to Pope John Paul II on January 31. The 2,000-page volume provides the latest information about all of the world's dioceses, including the changes that were made in 2004. During that year, the Pope created 10 new dioceses, 6 metropolitan sees, and 1 apostolic vicariate. He also appointed a total of 171 bishops.

The statistics furnished by the Annuario run through the end of 2003. Those figures show 1.086 billion baptized Catholics in the world-- up from 1.071 billion in 2002. The number of Catholics grew by 4.5 percent in Africa, by 2.2 percent in Asia, and by a bit over 1 percent in the Americas and Oceania; in Europe the number remained virtually stable.

Very nearly half of the world's Catholics-- 49.8 percent-- now live in the Western hemisphere. Europe accounts for 25.8 percent; Africa 13.2 percent, Asia 10.4 percent, and Oceania 0.8 percent.

There were 405,450 priests worldwide (268,041 diocesan and 137,409 religious) in 2003; for the previous year the number had been 405,058. Thus there was a net increase of 392 priests. The number of ordinations also rose slightly__ from 9,247 in 2002 to 9,317 in 2003. However, the future looks less promising, with the number of seminarians falling slightly, from 112,643 to 112,373.

Among the world's seminarians, 37,191 were studying in the Americas, 27,931 in Asia; 24,387 in Europe; 21,909 in Africa; and 955 in Oceania.