Statistics: catholics world wide and in Ireland
The Pontifical Yearbook 2017 and the “Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae” 2015
Released on 06.04.2017
Data to 2015. Comparisons from 2010.
Over 2,400 pages. 1350 grms. List price €78.00
Announcement: English: http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/04/06/170406e.html
(“America” in these documents refers not to USA but to all the Americas: South, Central and North.)
See also:
https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2017/04/06/vatican-statistics-confirm-catholic-future-africa/
Total Catholics: Millions: 89 million increase since 2010.
Largest increase in Africa. Europe, with almost static population, decreased since 2014.
2010 2014 2015
Totals 1,196 1,272 1,285 2010 + 7.4%; 2014 +1%
Africa 186 222 + 19.4%
Europe 285.2 287.3 286 2010 + 800,000; 2014 -1.3m
Americas +6.7% (49% of all Catholics)
Asia +9.1%
Oceania Stable
As percentage of total population:
Highest percentage is in the americas.
Asia 3.2%
Americas 73.7%
Africa 19.4%
Oceania 26.4%
Europe 39.9%
Top ten countries by numbers of Catholics: Millions
1 Brazil 172.2
2 Mexico 110.9
3 Philippines 86.3
4 USA 72.3
5 Italy 58.0
6 France 48.3
7 Colombia 45.3
8 Spain 43.3
9 Dem. Rep. Of Congo 43.2
10 Argentina 40.8
Priests in the world
2010 2015 Increase of 0.83%.
412,236 415 656
Africa + 17.4%
Asia +13.3%
Americas +0.35%
Europe -5.8%
Oceania -2.0%
Number of Catholics per priest.
The Americas, with 49% of all Catholics, have lowest proportion of priests.
World 2,900
Americas More than 5,000
Europe 1595 Decreasing
Asia 2185
Africa 5000
Bishops: 5304
Permanent deacons: 45,255 (98% in Europe & Americas)
Major seminarians per million Catholics.
Asia far outpaces all others.
2010 2015
World 99.5 90.9
Africa 130.6 + 7.7%
Americas 56.3 – 8.1%
Europe 65 – 9.7%
Oceania – 6.9%
Asia 245.7
Ireland Census 2016
Summary Results Part 1, released 6 April2017
http://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/presspages/2017/census2016summaryresults-part1/
Table 8.1 Population by religion, 2011 and 2016
Religion 2011 2016 % change
Thousands
Roman Catholic 3,861.3 3,729.1 -3.4
Church of Ireland 129.0 126.4 -2.0
Muslim (Islamic) 49.2 63.4 28.9
Orthodox 45.2 62.2 37.5
Christian 41.2 37.4 -9.1
Presbyterian 24.6 24.2 -1.6
Hindu 10.7 14.3 34.1
Apostolic or Pentecostal 14.0 13.4 -4.9
Other 70.2 97.7 39.1
No religion 269.8 468.4 73.6
Not stated 72.9 125.3 71.8
Total 4,588.3 4,761.9 3.8
92.51% of those who identified as Catholic gave their “broad nationality” as Irish.
In April 2016, persons born abroad accounted for 17.3 per cent of the population.
The proportion of the population who are not Irish nationals is 11.6%.
Those with no religion now account for 9.8% of the population: the largest group after Catholic.
Nothing to indicate how many of these formerly identified with a religion.
Those who did not state a religion are 2.6%.
Together, those with no religion or who did not state a religion are now about 1 in 8 of the population.
Data for Dublin, added by Padraig McCarthy
| Ages | 2014 | 2030 | ||
| Diocesan | Religious | Diocesan | Religious | |
| 35-40 | 3 | 3 | ||
| 40-45 | 13 | 6 | 5 | 0 |
| 45-50 | 23 | 13 | 5 | 0 |
| 55-60 | 35 | 7 | 12 | 5 |
| 60-65 | 52 | 15 | 19 | 10 |
| 65-70 | 48 | 35 | 39 | 10 |
| 70-75 | 49 | 30 | 28 | 6 |
| 75-80 | 19 | 14 | 34 | 9 |
| Totals | 295 | 124 | 149 | 43 |
| Totals | 419 | 192 | ||
Excellent article, Padraig.
I wonder what the rate of seminarians per million of the population is here in Ireland?
Given we have a Catholic population of 3.86m and maybe 70 seminarians. Maybe someone who is better than I am at the Maths could provide the answer?
Thanks again Padraig for another very useful piece of research. Those statistics are of course very thought provoking. Perhaps as a supplement you might be able to list the number of Catholics in Ireland per each diocesan priest. And another statistic would be helpful : how many Catholics per priest among those clergy who are working in parishes including religious order priests. And the age profile of those priests who are still active in Ministry would be useful to see.
Thanks, Francis @1 & Pat @2. I’ll try to dig up some of that information, if it’s available.
There’s an interesting article by Philip Jenkins well worth reading in the Catholic Herald in 2016: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/september-9th-2016/catholicisms-incredible-growth-story/.
He wrote:
“Critics keep announcing the Church’s imminent demise. If only they realised that numbers have doubled since 1970 – and are still rising.”
“In 1900, there were three Europeans for every African. By 2050, there will be three Africans for every European. But this expansion (the phenomenal growth in Christianity) is also, clearly, the result of mass conversions. During the 20th century, some 40 per cent of Africa’s people shifted their allegiance from older primal faiths to Christianity. Although Catholics do not represent the whole of this African story, they are a very significant part of it. In 1900, the whole of Africa had just a couple of million Catholics, but that number grew to 130 million by the end of the century, and today it approaches 200 million.”
Jenkins finishes with a quotation from Mark Twain (Following the Equator, Ch XIV, Vol II):
“In this world we have seen the Roman Catholic power dying … for many centuries. Many a time we have gotten all ready for the funeral and found it postponed again, on account of the weather or something … Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.”
Philip Jenkins was born in Wales, studied at Cambridge, won Mastermind, and is now Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University in the United States, in the Institute for Studies of Religion. As far as I can find (from Wikipedia!) he was raised Catholic and is now Episcopalian.
He has a remarkable output. Do an internet search. Well worth reading are:
The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East Africa and Asia – and how it died.
The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis.
The leaders of Catholicism paint a picture for us. They see the planet as an oasis where care for our common home and all of mankind is in the forefront of thought. When will the artists become architects? Is this the question that needs answering?
The End Of The Machine:
I can barely breathe this air.
My 20/20 is failing me
For what I see is unfair.
In a world that’s bent on consequence
Lost between truth and what makes sense
The sounds of evolution
As the end of the machine creeps near.
A round cog turns,
A lesson to be learned:
Our time was never meant to be earned.
Can you hear a revolution?
The end of the machine is here.
Apropos the intelligent writings of Philip Jenkins,(@3), I was rather impressed by the examples of Jenkins’ smooth agnosticism, in a critique by Alan Jacobs (March 2009):
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/001-the-way-the-truth-and-philip-jenkins.
Where Jenkins applauds Asian Christians for seeing the adherents of other faiths, not as rivals but as “fellow seekers for enlightenment”, Alan Jacobs insists that the quest of the Christian is not so much for enlightenment as for the love of God and neighbor and for reconciliation with God. Rather sharply he says, “Yes, if you choose to voyage along the road to enlightenment, you can get along swimmingly with your Buddhist neighbors. But you will have ceased to practice Christianity and begun to practice Buddhism or something very like it.
#5 So we should prefer not to get along ‘swimmingly’ with our Buddhist neighbours – and drop the Christian obligation to love our neighbour as ourselves? And oppose ‘enlightenment’ to ‘love’, despite the prologue to the Gospel of John and Jesus’ title ‘the light of the World’?
Daftly false dualistic antitheses abound in all competitive religion, always a matter of the seeking of an ascendancy – the very opposite of what Jesus did. Thanks for warning us about Alan Jacobs.
Pat Rogers @5:
Yes, there are times when I feel Philip Jenkins is tempted to the ultracrepidarian – to make statements beyond his field of competence. (“Ne sutor ultra crepidam” – let the shoemaker not go beyond the sandal.) He is very good, I think, on history and history of religion, but not so well versed in the finer points of theology.
On the other hand, I confess I am not as well versed as I would like to be in the theology of inter-faith relationships. The Catholic church has at times perhaps been over-protective and timorous in these matters. I wonder perhaps is Alan Jacobs somewhat too protective in his comments. I must again look out Dermot Lane’s 2011 book: “Stepping Stones to other Religions: A Christian Theology of Interreligious Dialogue”, if I can find it. On p.182 he wrote: “We must face the possibility, with fear and trembling, that we could be the ones who stifle the Spirit – stifle him through that pride of “knowing better”, that inertia of the heart, that cowardice, that unteachableness with which we react to fresh impulses and new pressures in the Church.” How do we learn to recognise the action of the Spirit in other peoples and faiths, and what are we called to do about it? It’s a major challenge. I think of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well, and with the Syro-Phoenician woman; and Peter with Cornelius.
Where Philip Jenkins offers his expertise in his own area, it seems to me he has a tremendous lot to offer. On the numbers, the Pew Research Center gives a similar picture in 2013: “Over the past century, the number of Catholics around the globe has more than tripled, from an estimated 291 million in 1910 to nearly 1.1 billion as of 2010, according to a comprehensive demographic study by the Pew Research Center. But over the same period, the world’s overall population also has risen rapidly. As a result, Catholics have made up a remarkably stable share of all people on Earth.” http://www.pewforum.org/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-population/
When it comes to theological interfaith matters, we may need to look further.
Francis @1 & Pat @2:
I do not have the number of religious priests or of major seminarians.
Ireland:
The maximum number of diocesan priests was in 1967/68:
3985
Census 1966:
Population 2,884,002. Diocesan priests 3958.
Population per priest: 729.
Census 2011:
Population 4,588,252. Diocesan priests 2050
Population per priest: 2238.
The following statistics are for Dublin Diocese only.
Is the age profile in your diocese is similar?
Towers Watson Report 2015:
Priests serving in Dublin Diocese
Ages….. …..2014….. ….. ……….2030
………..……Dioc…..Rel…….…|…Dioc…..Rel
35-40…….3….-….…3…..|
40-45…..13….. .6…….|……5…. …….0
45-50…..23….. …13……|……5….. ….0
50-55…..53….. …11……|….7….. ….3
55-60…..35……..….7……..|…12….. ….5
60-65…..52….. …15……|…19….. …10
65-70…..48….. …25……|…39….. …10
70-75…..49……..…30……|…28….. ….6
75-80…..19……..…14……|…..34….. ….9
Totals….295…..124……|..149………43
Totals… …….419… ………|………192
2030: 120+35 = 155 over 60.
37 under 60
If one ordination per year for 30 years:
Total 67 in 2045
Buddhism is based on two inseparable pillars, Wisdom and Compassion. Heinrich Dumoulin repeated this often, rueing that when consulted for Nostra Aetate he had stressed the first, forgetting the second.
@8: The data for Dublin didn’t come out right.
See is this any easier to follow?!
Ages….. …..2014….. ….. ……….2030
……………Dioc…..Rel……….Dioc…..Rel
35-40…….3….-……3
40-45…..13….. …..6…..~…..5…. ……..0
45-50…..23….. …13…..~…..5….. …….0
50-55…..53….. …11…..~…..7….. …….3
55-60…..35……….7……~…..12….. …..5
60-65…..52….. …15…..~…..19….. …10
65-70…..48….. …25…..~…..39….. …10
70-75…..49………30…..~…..28….. …..6
75-80…..19………14…..~…..34….. …..9
Totals…..295…..124….~….149……..43
Totals… …….419… …….~……..192
Ah! That’s a bit better.
Computers can be awkward!
@7 Padraig,
I found myself being enlightened when you wrote that the number of Catholics in the world has remained relative to the world’s population.
What are we to make from this? That our missionary efforts are keeping pace with current numbers of the population? or maybe no matter what happens in Rome, those who are going to become Catholics will do so, while those who wish to reject or renounce the Catholic faith will also do so?
The mind boggles!
SOME MARRIAGE STATISTICS FOR IRELAND FROM CENSUS 2016
CSO Census 2016 Report on Marriages and Civil Partnerships
http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/mcp/marriagesandcivilpartnerships2016/
Page 1:
Total: 22,626
Opposite Sex Marriages: 21,570 (95.33%)
Same Sex Marriages: 1,056 (4.67%)
Full Report, Table 13, on page 15:
Marriages of opposite sex couples celebrated in each county and city during 2016 classified by form of ceremony:
Catholic, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Spiritualist Union of Ireland, Other religious denominations, Civil marriages, Humanist Association.
State Total: 21,570/366 – average 58.93 per day!
Religious: 64.8%
Catholic: 12,140 (56.28%)
Civil Marriages: 5,588 (25.91%)
Leinster: 10,921
Catholic: 5,007 (45.85%)
Civil: 3,388 (31.02%)
Within Leinster: Dublin City: 2,602
Catholic: 559; (21.48%)
Civil: 1,708 (65.64%)
Only in Dublin City, Cork City and Waterford City does the number of Civil marriages exceed the number of Catholic ceremonies.
Is the location of a State Registry office for solemnisation a factor in these numbers?
Munster: 6,037
Catholic: 3,939 (65.25%)
Civil: 1,283 (21.25%)
Connacht: 2,775
Catholic: 1,973 (71.1%)
Civil: 541 (19.5%)
Ulster (part of): 1,837
Catholic: 1,221 (61.02%)
Civil: 376 (20.47%)