VATICAN (CWNews.com) — The 2002 edition of the Annuario Pontificio, the yearbook that contains the official summary of statistics for the Catholic Church, was presented to Pope John Paul II on Saturday, February 9.
Msgr. Vittorio Formenti, who heads the Vatican's statistical bureau, presented the new edition of the Annuario, which contains the names and addresses of all bishops and other Church leaders, together with figures about the various dioceses, apostolic administrations, religious orders, and other bodies within the Church. The Annuario provides the most recent available statistics for the Church, through the year 2000.
The new Annuario shows that:
- Since 1978, the number of seminarians around the world has grown by 73 percent, and the number of seminarians in Africa has more than tripled. There were 63,882 seminarians in 1978, and 110,553 in 2000. While the growth in seminary attendance was by far most dramatic in Africa, there were also increases in Asia (125 percent) the Americas (65 percent), and even Europe (12 percent).
- From 1999 to 2000, the number of Catholic priests in the world grew slightly: by 189. A small loss (600) in the number of priests associated with religious orders was offset by some growth (789) among diocesan clergy. There was a remarkable increase in the number of permanent deacons, and in the number of lay people dedicated to evangelical missions.
- The number of baptized Catholics in the world remained essentially unchanged, at 17.4 percent of the world population (as against 17.3 percent in 1999). The most heavily Catholic continent is America, where 49.4 percent of the people are Catholics. (The Vatican treats North and South America as a single continent.) Europe is now 26.7 percent Catholic, Africa 12.4 percent, Asia 10.7 percent, and Oceania 0.8 percent.
- The number of people formally involved in Catholic pastoral work is over 4 million, broken down in this way: 4,521 bishops; 405,178 priests; 27,284 permanent deacons; 55,057 monks (other than priests); 801,185 nuns; 30,687 members of secular institutes, 126,365 lay missionaries, and 2,641,888 catechists.
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