Worldwide Catholic population up slightly to 1.4 billion

March 20, 2025

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CWN Editor's Note: The world’s Catholic population continues to grow by just over 1% annually, surpassing 1.4 billion, according to the latest data published in the Pontifical Yearbook, the Annuarium for 2025.

The official statistics—covering 2023, the last year for which full figures are available—show rapid growth of the Catholic population in Africa, with slower growth in the Americas and Asia, and almost no growth in Europe.

Africa, which saw a 3.3% growth rate in the Catholic population in 2023, now accounts for 20% of all the world’s Catholics—nearly as many as Europe, which is 20.4% Catholic. But with Europe’s Catholic population growing by only 0.2%, Africa is likely to outstrip Europe soon.

The Americas—treated as a single continent in Vatican statistics—have the largest Catholic population, accounting for nearly half (47.8%) of the worldwide total. There the growth rate was 0.9%. Asia saw a 0.6% population increase among Catholics; Oceania, 1.9%.

There were 406,996 Catholic priests in the world at the close of 2023: a decrease of 0.2% from the previous year. That trend is likely to continue, since the number of seminarians (106,495) has also sunk by 1.8%. But the figures show wide differences among the continents; Africa saw a 2.7% increase in the number of priests; Europe a 1.6% decrease.

The number of women religious also dropped by 1.6%, continuing a long-term trend. But here too the numbers were different across the continents, with Africa reporting a substantial increase (2.2%) and Europe the largest decrease (3.8%).

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