The number of Catholics in the world continues to increase. That is what is reported by the March 20 publication of the 2025 edition of the Pontifical Yearbook and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2023, which compiles numerical data on Catholicism. The Vatican's official statistics thus indicate that the number of faithful increased by 1.15% between 2022 and 2023, going from 1.39 billion to 1.406 billion. That is more in proportion than the increase in the world population (0.9% in 2023, according to World Bank figures).

This dynamic, however, varies greatly depending on the continents. Unsurprisingly, the increase in the number of Catholics was most marked in Africa between 2022 and 2023, with 3.31%. The continent counted 281 million Catholics, an increase of 9 million compared to the previous year. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has the highest number of baptized (55 million), ahead of Nigeria (35 million), Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya.

A lesser dynamic in Europe

The American continent, which includes nearly half of the world’s Catholic population (47.8%), registers a 0.9% increase in baptized. More than half of Catholics born across the Atlantic are originally from South America. Oceania and Asia, for their part, show increases of 1.9% and 0.6%. According to Vatican data, Europe is the continent where the dynamic is weakest in the world, with only a 0.2% increase in the number of faithful.

The new Pontifical Yearbook also revealed a strong disparity in terms of priestly vocations. While they continue to grow in Africa (+2.7%) and Asia (+1.6%) between 2022 and 2023, the number of priests—406,996—is decreasing everywhere else in the world. Europe, which counts nearly four out of ten priests in the world, confirmed the downward trend in ordinations (–1.6%, after already a drop of 1.7% between 2021 and 2022). Oceania (–1%) and the Americas (–0.7%) thus experience a smaller decrease than on the Old Continent.

The number of seminarians, with the exception of Africa (+1.1%), is declining, with a marked decrease at the level of the universal Church (–1.8%). This has been an uninterrupted trend since 2012, particularly evident in Europe (–4.9%) and Asia (–4.2%).

More permanent deacons

The number of professed religious people in both male and female congregations also continues eroding at the global level. Here again, Africa is the only exception, with an increase of 2.2%, for example, for religious sisters. Elsewhere in the world, “the decrease in the number of professed religious sisters (…) is largely attributable to a considerable increase in deaths, resulting from a high proportion of elderly religious sisters, while the number of those leaving religious life has become less significant during the 2022–2023 period,” highlights the official media Vatican News.

According to the statistics published March 20, the most notable increase in the Catholic Church concerned permanent deacons, with an increase of 2.6% worldwide, going from 50,150 in 2022 to 51,433 the following year. In North America, they are most numerous (39% of the deacons in the world), and in Europe (31%). Like Europe, Africa is seeing a slight decrease in the diaconate. There are, on average, 13 deacons in the world for every 100 priests, but only 0.5 deacons for every 100 priests in Asia and 1 for 100 in Africa.