Global Catholic population increases by 12.5 million

[_Abyssinia]

The total number of Catholics is growing on every continent except Europe
The number of Catholics in the world increased by 12.5 million in 2015 to a total of nearly 1.3 billion people.

Figures reported by the Fides News Service show an increase on all continents, except Europe. Africa saw 7.4 million new Catholics, North and South America 4.8 million, Asia 1.6 million and Oceania 123,000. Europe’s Catholic population decreased by 1.3 million.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/new...atholic-population-increases-by-12-5-million/

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

If you go to that article it links to an article on fides.org, which lays out even more statistics. At the bottom of that article is a PDF file with various charts and graphs on those numbers. At the beginning of that PDF file it notes that it gets its numbers from the Statistcal Yearbook of the Church.

That’s important because when the Statistical Yearbook counts Catholics it does so by counting those baptized as Catholics and those who have officially converted to Catholicism. If a person is baptized in a Catholic Church and then moves onto another chruch, another faith, or no faith the Yearbook still counts them as Catholic. This is not clear in the quoted article, and in fact twice uses the term “identifying” when describing some of its numbers; but that is not to be confused with self-identifying as a Catholic (i.e. if you ask a person what faith he or she is that person would say Catholic).

It’s not too much of a big deal, since there are still many Catholics in the world. My concern is that because the article (and many others like it) don’t specify that the numbers are based off of a baptism-based rubric that people are going to look at it and assume the numbers are for those who would call themselves Catholic.