Does anyone know how many different religious orders there are in the Catholic Church

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redrosetea

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I haven’t been able to get a number from the net. I keep hearing about orders I never knew existed
 
If you mean all the congregations of consecrated religious persons…

It has been suggested by some that God might not even know.

A heckuva lot.

The more the merrier! 😃
 
redrosetea said:
I haven’t been able to get a number from the net. I keep hearing about orders I never knew existed
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There’s an old joke about things God doesn’t know:
  1. How many congregations of religious women are there?
  2. How much money do the Franciscans have stashed away?
  3. What are the Jesuits going to do next?
So I’m not sure you’re going to find a good answer.

CARA (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate) gives some numbers for the US for 2008:

Religious priests: 12,966
Religious brothers: 5,001
Religious sisters: 59,208

(And I just realized you asked about the number of congregations, not the number of members. Ah well, maybe someone else will have a number.)
 
This is a question I would like to know the answer to myself. I didn’t really care about what Orders there were or how many there were until I began my discernment. Now I’ve seen so many different Orders and I wish I could spend like a year visiting as many as I could possibly just to compare and contrast their services to the Church. That would be an amazing year. No one’s even heard of the Order I’m discerning with. I’m taking it as a Blessing and a sign from God that, of all the Religious Orders in existence, they were sent to my parish. I believe that’s His way of telling me I have a Vocation.
 
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