Every year in October, the news agency of the Roman Catholic Church, Fides, publishes statistics about the its membership, pastoral structures, and other aspects of the institution on a global level.

The 2024 edition has taken the data from the latest Statistical Yearbook of the Church (with data as at 31 December 2022).

Due to the upcoming Roman Catholic Holy Year 2025, this time Fides published an appendix that summarises the data collected over a period of 25 years (1998 to 2022). It includes data on the Catholic population, the number of priests, religious men an women and of baptisms worldwide.

Overall increase, except in Europe

The data show that there were around 1.4 billion Roman Catholics worldwide at the end of 2022, which is over 13 million more people than in the previous year.

Europe is the only place where there is a decrease in the number of Roman Catholics (-474.000). On all other continents, the number of Catholics increased, especially in Africa (+7.271.000) and in America (+5.912.000), followed by Asia (+889.000) and Oceania (+123.000).

According to the data collected for the period 1998-2022  by Fides, in 1998, 17.4% of the world's population was Roman Catholic, a figure that increased slightly in 2022 to 17.7%.

Fewer priests

There were almost 407,700 priests worldwide in 2022, almost the same number as in 2021.

The study points out that Europe shows “a consistent decrease” in the number of priests (-2,745), followed by America (-164), while significant increases were registered in Africa (+1,676) and in Asia (+1,160). Oceania, after an increase in 202, registers a small decrease (-69).

However, the 1998-2022 data shows that the number of priests worldwide has increased from 404,600 to 407,700 over the past 25 years.

Dramatic decline in baptisms

Despite of the growth of the Catholic population worldwide, the number of baptisms has fallen over the past 25 years. In 1998, there were almost 18 million baptisms. In 2022, there were only just over 13 million.

Find all of the figures by the Fides report here.