SW News: Perhaps, the future of the Catholic Church appears to be in the continent of Africa as per indications of the annual statistics released by the Pontifical Yearbook 2023. The Annuario Pontificio 2023 has revealed that the number of believers in Africa grew by 3.1 percent from  December 2021 to November 30 2022. It surpassed the growth rate in the Americas, which stood at 1.01 percent and Asia at 0.99 percent.

Almost one in five Catholics is from Africa. They grew from 18.9 percent in 2021 to 19.3 percent the following year. It is projected that they will overtake Europe soon. Across the world, the number of Catholics went up from 1,360 million in 2020 to 1,378 million the following year marking a 1.3 percent rise. In 2021, Catholic believers comprised 17.67 percent of the global population. The most number of Catholics still remains in the Americas with 64.1 believers per 100 people. It is followed by Europe with 39.6 Catholics and Oceania with 25.9 per 100. In Africa, the figure was 19.4 per 100 people.

In North and South America, 48 percent of the Catholics in the world reside. Of the lot, 57 percent of Catholics are in South America. In that continent, 27 percent of Catholics reside in Brazil alone and it earns the distinction of being the country with the highest number of believers in the world.

As of 2021, there were 5,340 bishops in the Church as well as 407,872 priests. The number of permanent deacons stood at 49,176. However, the number of clerics witnessed a slight drop of 0.39 percent when compared to figures for 2020. The number of bishops in 2020 was 5,363 compared to 5,340 in 2021. This dip in figures was witnessed across continents. The number fell from 2,022 to 2000 in the Americas, 810 to 806 in Asia, 1,678 to 1,676 in Europe, and 135 to 133 in the Oceania region.

Regarding the number of priests, there was a slight decrease of 0.57 percent in this period from 410,219 in 2020 to 407,872 the following year. In 2021, the total number of women religious stood at 608,958 and it marked a dip of 1.7 percent compared with the previous year.