Throughout the world, the Church continues to grow

Day after day we hear or read intimations in the media that the influence of the Church is diminishing or, in some cases, even gone and that men, women, and children are losing interest in the Church. This may be true in certain places, but the recent apostolic journey of His Holiness Pope Francis to the United States of America seems to argue against such claims.

The Holy See today released a few statistics - current as of 31 December 2013 (it takes a while to gather and compile data from across the world) - in anticipation of the celebration of the World Mission Day, which will be observed tomorrow.

The total of population of the world increased from the previous year by some 70,421,000 people, to a total of 7,093,798,000. At the same time, the number of persons baptized into the Catholic Church rose by some 25,305,000 people, to a total of 1,253,926,000, an increase of 0.09%.

New report provides positive and negative statistics

Marco Tosatti has a brief post on a new study released by Analasis Digirtal which examines the state of the Church today.

The report shows that the Catholic population of the world today numbers some 1,160,000,000 and is growing by some 34,000 people every day.  This is certainly good news and something to remember when we hear of the decline of the Church; it may be declining in the West, but in the East and the South it is booming.

The report also showed that there were some 1,600 Protestant denominations at the start of the twentieth century; in 2011, only a century later, there are some 42,000.  So much for Jesus' prayer that "they might all be one."