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Catholic World News News Feature

Religious orders show slight decline in membership January 30, 2006

As the Church prepares to celebrate the annual Day for Consecrated Life, the latest statistics show a slight overall decline in the number of religious men and women worldwide.

At the end of 1993-- the last year for which comprehensive figures are available-- there were 776,269 women belonging to Catholic religious orders in the world, and 192,029 men, of whom 137.409 were priests. Those figures showed a slight decline from the previous year: a drop of 0.85% for nuns and 0.38% for male religious other than priests.

The number of Catholic religious is highest in Europe, where there were 338,688 nuns and 20,594 male religious (excluding priests) in 2003. (Spain had the highest number of any single country, with 105,208 nuns and 4,909 monks.) The Americas were next, with 222,643 nuns and 16,565 monks, mostly in the US.

Although the numbers of religious in Africa and Asia were lower, those two continents have both enjoyed noteworthy increases in the number of men and women involved in consecrated life in recent years.

Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate Mass in the Vatican basilica on February 2, the feast of the Presentation. The many religious living in Rome will be invited to participate in the 10th annual observance of the Day for Consecrated Life.

After the Synod of Bishops discussed consecrated life at its October 1994 meeting, and Pope John Paul II issued his apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata in March 1996 to summarize the conclusions of the Synod discussions, the Pontiff decided to establish an annual Day for Consecrated Life, to be celebrated each year on the feast of the Presentation. Pope John Paul presided at the first such celebration in 1997.