Catholicism: more than 1.3 billion believers, but an erosion of vocations
The Catholic Church regularly publishes its statistics which give a snapshot of the number of Catholics. There are more than 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, a North-South contrast and an erosion of priestly vocations.
Mass during the Catholic festival of Young Hope in Keur Moussa, near Dakar, November 6, 2022. AFP - JOHN WESSELS
By: Éric Senanque
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With our correspondent at the Vatican,
The figures were published in March 2023 in the ecclesial statistical directory and compile statistics ending on December 31, 2021. We discover that Catholics numbered 1.37 billion on that date, or a little more than 17.5 % of world population.
The countries where we find the most Catholics are Brazil with nearly 180 million baptized people, ahead of Mexico, the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United States. The figures also reveal that from 2020 to 2021 the number of Catholics increased by sixteen million on the planet, but these are absolute figures and not trends. And precisely if we talk about trends, we see that the dynamics are very different from one continent to another.
North - South contrast
The barometer clearly shows a contrast between the North and the South. In these statistics, we see in particular that Europe is the only continent which lost Catholics from 2020 to 2021: - 244,000, a sign of the Old Continent's growing disaffection for Catholicism.
On the other hand, Africa gained more than eight million believers over the same period, and the trends have probably increased over the last two years, which have not yet been counted. Asia, for its part, has gained more than 1.5 million Catholics and the Americas more than six million, an opposite dynamic, again, from the European continent.
Erosion of vocations and believers in Europe
The evolution of the number of priests in the world is also a good indicator of trends. Here too, it is in Europe that the erosion of vocations is strongest: according to the same ecclesial directory, Europe lost 3,632 diocesan priests in 2021 compared to the previous year, while it increased 1,518 units in Africa and 719 in Asia over the same period. The share of religious people has also decreased significantly in Europe, America and Oceania, notably with a significant decrease in the number of religious women, while the curve is increasing on the African and Asian continents.
Pope Francis has repeated several times that it is not the numbers that count but the dynamism and prefers not to look towards Europe. His travels are also oriented towards these continents where Catholicism is in full expansion, as evidenced by his trips
to the Democratic Republic of Congo
, where he went a year ago, or soon, East Timor, since it is under study.
Also read: Is Catholicism losing momentum?
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