Vatican offers statistical portrait of Spanish Church before papal trip

October 29, 2010

Looking forward to the visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Spain next week, the Vatican has released a set of statistics about the Church in that country.

About 92.5% of Spain’s 46 million people are Catholics. The country has 70 dioceses and other “ecclesiastical circumscriptions” and 22, 674 parishes. There are 124 Spanish bishops, 24,489 priests, and 54,599 religious, as well as 3,906 seminary students. The 5,585 Catholic schools—including all levels of education—serve 1,596,429 students. The Church sponsors 163 hospitals and clinics, 788 homes for the elderly or disabled, 435 orphanages and nurseries, 301 counseling centers, 3,036 institutions for education and social rehabilitation, and 400 institutions of other kinds.

Pope Benedict will travel to Spain November 6-7, stopping in Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela.

 

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Further information:

• Statistics for the Catholic Church in Spain (VIS)