Pope Francis at his weekly Wednesday audience in St. Peter’s Square June 26, 2019. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA.
St. Louis, Mo., Mar 13, 2023 / 03:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis was elected to the papacy 10 years ago, on March 13, 2013. How has the worldwide Catholic Church changed since then?
Statistically speaking, the Church has grown, keeping pace with and even exceeding overall world population growth. The total number of Catholics worldwide grew from 1.253 billion in 2013 to 1.378 billion in 2021, an increase of nearly 10%. During the same period, the world’s population as a whole grew by 9.1%, according to the World Bank.
Despite this increase, the Church performed 2 million fewer baptisms in 2020 than in 2013. The number of marriages declined by 702,246, or nearly a third. Confirmations and first Communions also dropped by 12% and 13%, respectively, despite relatively stable levels of Mass attendance in the world’s 13 most Catholic countries.
A Catholic researcher told CNA this week that the biggest likely reason for this drop in participation in the sacraments is not hard to guess — three of the 10 years of Francis’ pontificate have been marked by the worldwide effects of a pandemic. But that’s not the only reason, he says.
“I don’t know if the Catholic world has changed as much as just the world [in general] has changed,” Mark Gray, senior researcher with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, told CNA.
“The Church and Pope Francis and bishops have had to try to navigate their way through some really challenging demographic changes as well as the pandemic. And the Catholic Church has come out of these better than many other Christian denominations. So there’s good news there, but there’s still a lot to weather. There’s a headwind, I would say, against the Church.”
The drop in participation in the sacraments worldwide is not due only to the pandemic, he cautioned, but rather is part of a much larger demographic trend worldwide of declining births. According to the World Bank’s world development indicators, life expectancies at birth have been increasing globally from 51 years in 1960 to 72 years in 2020. At the same time, Gray wrote, the birth rate per 1,000 people has fallen from 32 in 1960 to 17 in 2020.
“The number of births is expected to decline annually into the foreseeable future, eventually being outnumbered by deaths in 2085, according to U.N. projections,” Gray wrote in a March 9 blog post.
“The population will grow in the decades ahead as life expectancies continue to increase but at the same time births will decline and that will result in fewer baptisms, fewer first Communions, fewer students, and yes even fewer marriages annually just by the numbers of the demographic shift we are experiencing.”
Gray wrote that the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, which prevented Catholics around the world from accessing the sacraments for a time, will likely take years to fully quantify. He also cautioned that two of the most authoritative sources for the number of Catholics have significant lags in their data. The most recent full dataset contained in the current edition of the Vatican’s Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae is for 2020, though the Vatican’s newspaper published a summary of the 2021 statistics earlier this month. The Official Catholic Directory, which covers the United States, goes up to 2021.
“Any impact, positive or negative, Pope Francis may have had will be overshadowed by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic when our most current data represents 2020 and 2021,” Gray wrote.
“We know looking at Church data for these years we are going to see lower levels of Mass attendance and sacramental practice with the impact of lockdowns, restrictions, and hesitancy for people to gather in crowds in enclosed spaces during those two years.”
Other statistical indicators present a mixed picture of the Church’s growth in some areas and recession in others. For example, the total number of students in Catholic schools is up by 7.3% since 2013.
“One of the really bright signs for the Church is growth in Catholic education globally; more of the world’s youth are being educated in Catholic schools than they have in years and decades past,” Gray noted to CNA.
The number of diocesan priests worldwide appears to be virtually unchanged in the decade of Pope Francis’ pontificate, while the number of religious priests dipped only slightly. The number of religious sisters worldwide suffered a larger drop of nearly 11%.
According to the Vatican, however, the number of seminarians worldwide has been decreasing since 2013. The 2021 report shows the number of seminarians across the globe decreased by 1.8% since 2020. The sharpest declines were in North America and Europe, where the number of seminarians decreased by 5.8% on both continents.
Despite overall growth in the number of Catholics worldwide, that growth has not been evenly distributed. Overall, Africa has a higher baptism rate than Europe and a far higher rate of Mass attendance in countries with large Catholic populations. Another recent analysis by CARA found that Nigeria, Kenya, and Lebanon have the highest proportion of Catholics who attend Mass weekly or more, with Nigeria as the clear leader. Ninety-four percent of Catholics in Nigeria say they attend Mass at least weekly. In Kenya, the figure was 73%, and in Lebanon it was 69%. In comparison, countries like Germany, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are all under 15%.
In addition, Africa bucks the trend of declining vocations by showing an increase in seminarians and religious brothers, according to the 2021 Vatican statistics. Africa also saw the only increase in seminarians and religious brothers across the globe from 2020-2021, at 0.6%. The number of religious brothers in Africa increased by 2.2% during the same time frame.
Pope Francis has made pastoral attention to Africa a priority of late, making a visit to the heavily Catholic Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan last month to an enthusiastic welcome.
Focusing on the United States — where a mere 5% of the world’s Catholics live — the picture is a bit less optimistic. In contrast to the stable numbers of the world as a whole, the number of diocesan priests in the U.S. dropped 8% from 2013 to 2021. There are 27% fewer sisters, 19% fewer brothers, and 15% fewer religious priests compared with a decade ago, though the number of permanent deacons has increased slightly, by 3%. Gray said the United States disproportionately relies on immigrant priests to address its own shortages.
Additionally, according to the General Social Survey, weekly Mass attendance among Catholics in the U.S. declined from 25% in 2012 to 17% in 2020-2021. The drop in sacramental participation in the U.S. — baptisms, marriages, etc. — mirrors the global trends.
As well, “since 2013, we’ve lost more than 1,000 parishes through reorganizations and closures,” Gray noted.
“Daily prayer declined from 59% to 51% from 2012 to 2020-2021. Unlike Mass attendance, one can pray at home and this should not have been affected by the pandemic. If anything, one might think Catholics would be praying more often during that time.”
Gray again cautioned that there are much larger demographic and social changes going on in the U.S. — and in the world at large — than can be attributed solely to Pope Francis’ leadership.
“No one should be giving Pope Francis a 10-year report card based on the most current data available,” he concluded.
“And when more comparable post-COVID-19 data are available, any ‘grades’ given for changes in the number of sacraments celebrated should be considered within the context of what is happening demographically across the globe.”
Speaking with CNA, he added: “It’s hard to make this comparison [between 2013 and 2023] because we have these lags in the data … We’ll know more in a couple of years when the data catches up with us.”
[…]
So what was once the Synod of Bishops will now be Synods of Bishops, Priests, Sisters, Car Salesmen, Teachers, Financial Advisors, HR Directors, Assistant Principals, Cashiers and Truck Drivers…
Remind me. Is this the Catholic Church we’re talking about, or the Rotary Club?
Agreed brineyman. Synodaling is not Catholic. Synodaling abuses the God-given authority of the hierarchy to destroy the God-given authority of the hierarchy. As such, Synodaling is a suicidal form of clericalism.
Synodal Superlodge.
Indeed. But why so negative?
After all, the geographic “contexts” of new-layer regional and continental bureaucracies will surely polyhedralize the merely diocesan bishops who, however, are a higher kind of “context” as successors of the Apostles.
But, still, “we” might converge globally on a very unifying theological question. And even a Q & A query updated from the rigid Baltimore Catechism…That is:…who the hell are all these people, and “from whence have they come and whither are they synodalling?”
Mark Twain held that the only folks justified in using the editorial “we” are newspaper editors and people with tapeworms.
You forgot the person in the pew. What the heck! They have opinions too I just came from a Mass where the choristers occupied the major pert of what used to be the Sanctuary and gave us virtually non-stop pop entertainment. The Eucharist was in a niche on the side altar. Attendees passed within five feet of the tabernacle. Not one person genuflected of even nodded their head. The applause and cheering at the end was huge. It was the last regular performance in a Parish that is closing. Not enough priests or regular Parishioners to keep it going. I wonder why.
what state or country, if you don’t mind?
Baltimore, MD is the site. They are shuttering some 30+ parishes in the City. The Church I was in will now have a Mass on a rotating basis with about 6 others. I raised my family around that Parish for nearly 50 years. All my children went to the school. The Whoopie Mass I attended would have been unintelligible back then. Demographic change is a part of the Parish problems/issues, but a ‘modern Protestantish worship’ service overlaying the ‘new’ liturgy surely cant help.
Bernard, that blasphemous mockery of the mass was perhaps your last? We all have a breaking point at which we seek Traditional Latin Mass and wonder why we waited so long…
When Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury (ca. 1533) and the chief architect of the nascent Anglican Church he forced worshipers to receive Communion in the hand and he hoped thereby to destroy belief in the Real Presence in one generation. (see The Life of Newman by Velez). It is about one generation since the practice began in today’s Catholic Church. Enough said.
That wouldn’t be as bad as inclusiveness including the unrepentant traffikers, drug dealers, pimps, abortionists, depraved theologians, and corrupt politicians, oh, sorry, I already said pimps.
We read: “The pontiff added that the general secretariat of the synod and the Vatican’s dicasteries will assist him in this task [‘listening, convening, discerning, deciding, and evaluating’].”
With due and genuine respect in these complex times, this is a most challenging next task—now from the focus group recommendations—to precisely lift out the baby, yes, from the bathwater, also yes, so as to not contradict other elements of the existing ordinary Magisterium.
Recalling in another and interreligious context that it’s only an Islamic principle to actually “abrogate” what came before by what comes afterward. Listening, too, to the Catholic layman St. Thomas More, speaking in yet another context only of king’s and laity: “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it?”
That “quote” is from A Man For All Seasons, and not actually from St. Thomas More. There is no question whatsoever (based upon overwhelming scholarly evidence) that in the entire West during his era, and even the two millennia preceding his time, that the roundness of the Earth was common and universally-accepted everyday knowledge as understood by all of society. Since the opposite claim (which is pure nonsense) is so commonly mobilized for anti-Catholic historical propaganda purposes today (“stupid backwards Medieval Catholics”), I just wanted to get that out there.
Yes, Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” 1960). Also, this, possibly referring today to a few heroic backwardists:
“If we lived in a State [etc.] where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all…why then perhaps we must stand fast a little–even at the risk of heroes.”
Well, my deed will be to conclude this was all a fraudulent waste of time and money.
My opinion of this Vatican can’t get much lower. Sad.
But like all communist governments, the Vatican will declare it a great success.
Thank God it’s over. The People of God can now attend to their collective headache which this papacy has no difficulty at all provoking.
The choices of the Pontiff Francis and his “synod-cultists-of-apostasy-and-queer-neo-pagan-Rupnik-abuser-church” do not involve the whole Church, they pertain only to their own hermetically sealed cult.
I am not as optimistic. Although the authors of the document (which I forced myself to read in its entirety) refer to the Vatican II and make themselves its heirs, to me they are the heirs of the so-called “spirit of the Vatican II” about which pope Benedict discoursed in his ‘Milestones’. He wrote with a palpable astonishment about what was going on: a theological madness, triumphant denial of an apostolic tradition, destruction of beauty, chaos in minds – in a word, a phenomenon which he and his collaborators had never envisaged. I will add to this a disregard of “people of God” under the mask of doing it for them (this is what is happening now as well). I truly believe that what we have now is a legalization of that “Vatican II spirit” and nothing else. If before one could try to appeal to a tradition, Church’s life as it was before now it is impossible because only “synodality” matters. And anyone can call “synodality” anything he wants, as long as it fits into a general vague agenda of a mutual petting of the ego. Being stripped of all verbal fluff, “synodality” boils down to a motto “if you see me as nice, I will see you as nice and will glorify you and you will glorify me”. It is easy to see that God (who is to be adored and glorified) must go because He is in the way of the cult of self-adoration.
Thus, the whole thing is very insidious and very far from being “sealed”. “The things” will find a response in people’s ego and will go on. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for improving interpersonal relationships within the Church (Rupnik’s case being a symbol of wrong models of interpersonal relationships), throwing away misogyny or any disrespect of others but it is not what is happening. Paradoxically, they throw away the only measure which can help in that, Jesus Christ. You are against misogyny? – Good on you, write an encyclical which is drawn on how Our Lord had dealt with women. Make theological-psychological treatise and oblige all to implement it, in their own minds and parishes. Make study groups. I am sure it is done, there will be no need to throw in populist “empowering women” whatever.
Anna –
You are certainly correct about my words saying that “Pontiff Francis and his synod-cult” are “hemertically sealed.” That was poorly stated by me.
And I, like you, see no reason to be optimistic about the faithfulness of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. I believe that the intention of most of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the Pontiff Francis, and it seems most Cardinals and Bishops and “Team-Francis-celebrities” I can observe in Europe, North America and South America) is to apostasize and de-capitate the Body of Christ (I am using the decapitation metaphor employed by Fr. Robert Imbelli).
I guess the only thing I can say is that I am not an apostate, and that since they are, they are excommunicating themselves from the Body of Christ. Where that leaves people like me (and you and others) is I guess where the men and women of the Ordinariate are: they have not apostasized, but their Church, the Church of England, has already formally apostasized, and they (the Ordinariate) are the dwindling remnant of the faithful who sought refuge in the CAtholic Church under Pope Benedict XVI.
My only hope is in the one who desrves our hope: Christ our King. And my only communion is with those who worship and obey and profess him as the head of his Church, the Body of Christ.
Chris, I share your position fully.
Years ago I began noticing the utmost banality in what was happening so the words “the banality of evil” kept popping up in my mind.
What can be more banal (and absurd) than swapping theosis (man to become God, to be with Christ in love) with an inflated reflection of oneself in a narcissistic mirror held by others, a pathetic attempt to become a little god! The New Banal Church is, in essence, a place where each person holds a flattering mirror for the other and vice versa endlessly; altogether they create a maze of reflections, an endless corridor in which they “journey” in perfect “mutuality”. Those reflections merge and this is their “unity” which exists only in a mirror, instead of true unity via Christ.
Even when I was an atheist in my youth, who did not identify with the concept of sin, I still recognized personal evil, which is self-evidently self-worship. It was a mystery to me that the religious people I met did not seem to grasp such an easy concept. I realized their “religion” had to have declined to a place of systematically reinforced disassociation from the principles they claimed.
Thank you Anna.
Among the petitions of the Anima Christi, one resounds in these days: “Passion of Christ…strengthen me.”
The Holy Spirit strengthen you, and me, and all of us, as one Body, with the mind and heart of Christ our King.
Anna, There are a great many astute comments posted here at CWR.
Congratulations on posting one of the all time best.
The “spirit of Vatican 2” is often an excuse to not really knowing and doing the truth of Vatican 2 – and often rejecting the latter out of a genuine caution towards “fundamentalism.’ The Democrats often attempt to not follow the Constitution by appealing to doing the “spirit of the Constitution” as well for the same reasons. And so the pendulum swings too far towards “spirit.” How about we do both the spirit of Vatican 2 and the substance of Vatican 2, but if the spirit contradicts the substance, let go of one’s interpretation of “spirit” because we could be following the wrong spirit. Forget pendulum swinging. We are supposed to walk the middle path.
Dear Fred
I think you’ll find the term “Freemasonic Spirit of Vatican II” explains everything.
Kind regards
Mr C.N.
Yeah, that’s right up there with “Babylonian mysticism”. Sigh.
Which is it?
“I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.””
“…guide for the mission of the Churches, on the different continents, in the different contexts…”
As the Ordinary Magisterium exercised absent of agreement with pontiff and bishops on a definitive teaching of faith and morals – in this instance it’s not infallible. As Francis says the final document is a guide.
Nevertheless the pronouncement by Pope Francis appears to give the bishops and lay participants an independence in development of guidelines that potentially become doctrine. Whether doctrine can be developed independently of the Roman pontiff and the universal body of bishops [referring to bishops and cardinals who are not participants] is problematic.
A sure sign of intelligence is simple profundity.
So what were once Synods of Bishops will now be Synods of Bishops, Priests, Sisters, Car Salesmen, Teachers, Financial Advisors, HR Directors, Assistant Principals, Cashiers and Truck Drivers…
Remind me. Is this the Catholic Church we’re talking about, or the Rotary Club?
Reform? In what sense? To correct error and sin, or to “re form” into a new entity? Whatever their intent understand “reform” as further mutilation.
These theatrics have no credence.
James, always in delighted agreement with your very succinct comments.
But, eh, about reform and the “new entity,” why be so non-inclusive? If one were to fumigate the termite-infested sectors of the Vatican, surely multiple new infestations would spring up in each of the substitute continental assemblies or entities (plural).
If these up-to-seven mixed-company town hall meetings ever presume synodally to be more than what they are, why surely you could agree that even this polyhedral outcome is still biblical…
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits [!] more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation” (Mt 12:43-45).
QUESTION: Like the Synod on Synodality, now will the “hot-button” study groups also offload their hot-potato themes, geographically?
We are all Protestants now
Am I allowed to protest that comment?
How so are we all Protestants? I am a Catholic who accepts that the Pope is Francis. Pope Francis says make a mess. I say Synodaling is a suicidal form of clericalism. Is that opinion messy enough in your opinion for you to agree that I am being a faithful Catholic?
Note that I never commented during previous pontificates. Should the next Pope return us to clarity on matters of Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and should said Pope ask us to refrain from making a mess, I will gladly cease throwing peanut shells from the upper gallery.
Dear Fool!
Your comments from the peanut gallery are the silver lining of this Synodolytrous Bergoglian fiasco! (Am I right in thinking that “fiasco” is an Italian word?)
And they are amusing enough that I cannot honestly say that I wish there had never been a Bergoglian papacy.
Glad we are together in the peanut gallery. My understanding is that fiasco is the Italian word for flask or wine bottle from medieval Latin. Perhaps the Bergoglio family made wine bottles long ago in Italy? The Asti region where they are from is known for wine. 🍷 So maybe this is how we are supposed to make a mess?
Wikipedia adds to your definition: A fiasco (/fiˈæskoʊ/, Italian: [ˈfjasko]; pl.: fiaschi) is a traditional Italian style of bottle, usually with a round body and bottom, partially or completely covered with a close-fitting straw basket. The basket is typically made of sala, a swamp weed, sun-dried and blanched with sulfur. The basket provides protection during transportation and handling, and also a flat base for the container. Thus the glass bottle can have a round bottom, which is much simpler to make by glassblowing.[1] Fiaschi can be efficiently packed for transport, with the necks of inverted bottles safely tucked into the spaces between the baskets of upright ones.
Note the basket is made from SWAMP WEED, blanched with sulfur. Now we know the origin of the bad smell.
Exercising his atheistic mind as he does affects crimes against humanity. Not a laughing matter. And can a criminal pope retain the papacy?
God’s Fool,
Actually is quite a mess to say that “the Pope is Francis;” the different and less autocratic expression is that “Francis is the Pope.” Hence, the mess of the so-called Francis Magisterium.
As a forwardist, making my own little mess in the year 11 AF, I prefer to acknowledge the illustrious messy autocracy of the personal magisterium of Francis.
Distinctions are so BF (Before Francis).
Happy Halloween!