By Carol Glatz and Vatican City
The number of Catholics and permanent deacons in the world rose in 2023, while the number of seminarians, priests, men and women in religious orders, and baptisms all declined, according to Vatican statistics.
However, the Vatican’s Statistical Yearbook of the Church said, 9.1 million people received their first Communion in 2023, up from 8.68 million people the previous year, and almost 7.7 million people were confirmed, up from 7.4 million people in 2022.
At the end of 2023, the number of Catholics in the world reached 1.405 billion, up 1.15% from 1.389 billion Catholics at the end of 2022, according to the Vatican’s Central Office of Church Statistics, which publishes the yearbook.
This came despite a smaller growth rate in the world’s population, which, for that period was 0.88%. According to the United Nations’ Demographic Yearbook, the estimated mid-year world population for 2023 was approximately 8.045 billion.
The Vatican published its statistical yearbook offering data “on the life and activity of the church in the world in 2023” at the end of March.
The yearbook cautioned that its numbers were based on the information it received back from its surveys and that of 3,188 dioceses and other jurisdictions about 140 did not send information.
The number of Catholics “does not include those in countries that because of their present situation have not been included in the survey,” it said, adding that it estimated that number to be about an additional 5 million Catholics. Mainland China and North Korea, for example, had no data in the yearbook.
The percentage of Catholics as part of the global and continental populations remained about the same as in 2022. Catholics represented about 17.8% of the global population at the end of 2023, it said. The highest proportion is in the Americas with 64.2% of its population being baptized Catholic. Europe follows with 39.6% and Oceania with 25.9%. In Africa, 19.8% of the population is Catholic and the lowest proportion of Catholics by continent is Asia with 3.3%.
While the number of Catholics is increasing, the administration of the sacrament of baptism has continued to decrease worldwide, according to the yearbook. It fell from 17,932,891 baptisms administered in 1998 to 13,327,037 in 2022 and 13,150,780 in 2023. A peak was reported during the Holy Year 2000 when 18,408,076 baptisms were administered worldwide.
The yearbook said the “general downward trend in the relative number of baptisms” has been “following closely the trend in the birthrate in most countries.”
It said the ratio of infant baptisms to the Catholic population is of “great significance” because it notes differences between one country and another. While the world average is 7.4 infant baptisms per 1,000 Catholics, the highest ratios are in American Samoa (71.2), several islands in Oceania (37.7 to 21.8), followed by Burundi (23.6), Cambodia (22.3), Timor Leste (20.3) and Myanmar (20.1). The lowest ratios are in Armenia, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, Tunisia and Algeria (below 1) followed by Russia and Djibouti (1.1).
The total number of adult baptisms registered in 2023 was 2,696,521, which is about 20% of the total number of baptisms. The highest proportion of adult baptisms is in Africa (35.9%) and the lowest is in Europe and the Middle East.
The Catholic Church had 5,430 bishops at the end of 2023, an increase of 77 bishops from 2022. The majority of them are serving in the Americas and Europe.
The total number of diocesan and religious order priests decreased by 734 men to a total of 406,996, the Vatican office said. The only significant increase in the number of diocesan and religious order priests was in Africa and Asia, which was not enough to offset the declines in the Americas and Europe.
While the number of religious-order priests had increased by 297 men in 2022, the number went down to 128,254 in 2023, about what it had been in 2021. The number of diocesan priests continued to decrease globally with 278,742 men at the end of 2023.
The yearbook also offered a chart tracking the overall change to the number of diocesan clergy from 2013 to 2023 by calculating how many of those already serving were newly ordained, minus those who died and those who left the priesthood. It showed there was modest growth from 2013 to 2016 (0.31% to 0.05%) followed by a negative rate starting in 2017 that peaked in 2020 during the pandemic (-0.73%). The rate was recorded at -0.45% in 2021 and -0.12% in 2022.
The number of Catholics per priest increased slightly to 3,453 from 3,408 Catholics per priest in 2022.
The total number of religious brothers continued to decrease in 2023 from 49,414 to 48,748 and the total number of religious women, it said, was down to 589,423 from 599,228 at the end of 2022 — a decrease of 9,805 women or 1.64%.
The number of permanent deacons continued to increase. There were 51,433 permanent deacons at the end of 2023 — a 2.54% increase over the previous year, with the highest numbers being in the Americas.
The number of seminarians continued to decrease globally with a 1.67% average rate of decline from 2018 to 2023. There were 106,495 seminarians at the end of 2023 with the only growth — 383 men — being in Africa.
The number of Catholic weddings celebrated around the world in 2023 was down from 1.97 million in 2022 to 1.85 million; of those, about 10.3% involved a Catholic marrying a non-Catholic.
   GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO
ASSISI – ITALY
Pilgrims have been pouring into this medieval hilltop town to venerate not only two of the Catholic Church’s most celebrated saints, Francis and Clare, but its newest — Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint, who will be canonized on April 27.
“St. Francis, St. Clare, of course, important saints who marked an epoch — but that’s far removed from today’s teens. Carlo is like the kids,” said Maria Rosario Riccio, a mother and educator who was visiting Acutis’ shrine recently with a 50-strong parish youth group from southern Italy. “He’s a near-saint of our time, who can show teens that it’s possible to love Jesus while being a regular youth.”
The group lined up to enter the Santuario della Spogliazione — a somber church, also known as Santa Maria Maggiore, marking the spot where more than 800 years ago St. Francis renounced his family’s wealth. There, they prayed by the monument where Acutis’ body is on view, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers.
On that Saturday, hundreds filed past — a priest and his parishioners from the Azores islands, a nun from Colombia and her Passionist sisters, a family with two teens from near Venice. Some clutched rosaries, others took selfies or touched the protective glass in front of the seemingly sleeping young man, who died of leukemia at 15 in 2006 and is generating a devotion that astonishes even Assisi’s bishop.
“I’m seeing here a volcano of grace erupting … I can’t believe my eyes,” said Bishop Domenico Sorrentino. When he became bishop two decades ago, the church next to his residence just off the main street was “forgotten” by the throngs that visited the monumental Basilica of St. Francis.
Over the last year, more than a million pilgrims paid homage to Acutis, Sorrentino said, drawn by “his smiling way of living our faith.”
The teen’s happy image, usually in a red polo shirt and carrying a backpack, is as popular in souvenir shops across town as Francis in his simple brown habit.
One store owner picked up a blessed icon the first time she went to the shrine and keeps it glued to her cash register.
“I was really curious about this new saint who attracts youth,” Silvia Balducci said.
Both the church and his family describe Acutis as an exceptionally devout but otherwise regular Italian boy, who’s working miracles after his untimely death precisely by drawing youth to faith when most of his contemporaries are abandoning organized religion.
“Carlo wasn’t an alien, he was a normal person. But if it’s illuminated by the light of Christ, a life becomes extraordinary,” his mom, Antonia Salzano Acutis, told The Associated Press. “We always pray to the saints, and in the end, what did saints do? They opened the doors of their lives to Christ.”
She quoted one of her son’s favorite phrases: “‘Everyone is born an original, but many die photocopies.”
“The saint is one who didn’t die like a photocopy, who realized that project of holiness that God established in eternity for each of us, as we all should,” she said.
Not an observant Catholic herself when she had him, Acutis used to joke with her husband that their young son was “a little Buddha” because of his unselfishness, attention to others, and cheerful obedience.
He developed a precocious interest in faith, such as wanting to enter every church to “say hi” to Jesus and Mary. Later, he started attending Mass, adoring the Blessed Sacrament and praying the rosary daily — while also entertaining with jokes his friends who were less interested in religion and more into going to nightclubs with their girlfriends and smoking an occasional joint.
“This was a bit of a way of hiding his faith life, because Carlo knew that his friends couldn’t understand,” his mother said. “But Carlo was a witness, a silent witness through the value of friendship, through the value of generosity, helping his classmates in school, defending the teens who were bullied.”
Acutis often helped the homeless and was uninterested in the trappings common for a wealthy child in Milan, one of Europe’s fashion and business capitals. He asked his parents to donate to the poor what they would have spent for a second pair of sneakers for him, and insisted he wanted to teach catechism at his parish instead of going on skiing holidays at fancy resorts like his peers.
That denial of privilege is a parallel with St. Francis, to whom Acutis was so devoted that he asked to be buried in Assisi, said Fr. Enzo Fortunato, who spent most of his religious career there and heads the pontifical committee for World Children’s Day.
“And there are more similarities with St. Francis. St. Francis left the churches and went to the squares to preach. Carlo Acutis prophetically realized that today the public squares are online, on the Web,” Fortunato said. “That’s where youth are, that’s where people are, so he lives and brings the Gospel in those squares. That’s one of the reasons why he will become the patron of the Web, Internet and social media.”
Particularly devout to the eucharist and wanting to share the Catholic belief that Jesus is literally present in it, Acutis created an online exhibit about miracles where the bread and wine became flesh and blood throughout the centuries. It’s been used in thousands of parishes worldwide, his mother said.
For her, his being “a bridge to Jesus” — even in his terminal illness, which he faced without complaining, certain of eternal life — is a more important legacy than any miracles or supernatural signs.
To become a saint, however, miracles do need to be attested. One in Acutis’ canonization process was the healing of a Costa Rican student from a bicycle accident in Italy after her mother prayed to him, Sorrentino said.
Sabina Falcetta goes often to Acutis’ shrine from the nearby city of Perugia with a group of fellow mothers to pray for their children.
“Carlo Acutis gives us peace,” she said. “Most importantly he gives us the certainty that God is a good father. And you can’t ask for more.”
As she talked outside the sanctuary, a Confirmation group from Lake Garda in northern Italy was praying in a circle by a cutout of Acutis in his jeans and backpack standing by a larger-than-life monstrance.
One of the catechists, Veronica Abraham, said she had been teaching about both St. Francis and Acutis, focusing on the teen’s charity and his custom of sitting down to chat with anyone who looked lonely, “since even a ciao is important for those who are alone.”
Her son Mario Girardi, 13, said he was really struck by the fact that Acutis — when only a couple of years older than him — “spoke with everyone, didn’t let anything bother him but helped everyone.”
While he’s not considering the priesthood, Girardi does go to church every Sunday and plans to “always stay in this mindset” — maybe even going to daily Mass.
Would he want to become a saint, too?
“Well, let’s hope. Yes, right? Never say never, who knows,” the boy said, grinning.
