Catholics are still growing in Asia, but priestly vocations decline further
The Pontifical Yearbook for 2022-2023 was released. The number of Catholics in the world is rising, to 1.406 billion. The number of bishops and priests is still growing in Asia (+1.6 per cent), but the number of seminarians is down by 4.2 per cent. Southeast Asia is one of the few regions where the number of women religious is increasing, slightly. About 30 per cent of all nuns and 18.2 per cent of all priests live in Asia.
Rome (AsiaNews) – The number of Catholics in Asia is up by 0.6 per cent, this according to the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2023, the Pontifical Yearbook, released yesterday by the Central Office of Church Statistics of the Vatican Secretariat of State, with data about the pastoral action of the Catholic Church in the world in the 2022-2023 period.
Looking at the whole world, Catholics are growing in parallel with the population, 1.406 billion, 1.15 per cent more than 12 months earlier. The Philippines, in Southeast Asia, is home to Asia’s largest Catholic community with 93 million members or 76.7 per cent of the country’s population. India comes in second place with 23 million.
The number of bishops is also up, with seven new dioceses erected in the two-year period, mostly in Asia and Africa, but the relative weight of each continent remains almost the same.
On average there is one bishop per 259,000 Catholics, with slightly more in Africa and America. Only in Asia (+1.6 per cent) and Africa (+2.7 per cent) is the number of priests increasing. Overall, their number dropped by 0.02 percent: 406,996 priests in 2023, 734 fewer than in 2022. The rise in Asia is due to both diocesan and religious priests. Asia is home to 18.2 per cent of the world's priests, in second place after Europe (38.1 per cent).
Despite the encouraging increase, largely due to lower average age, in Asia as well as in Africa, the negative trend visible since 2012 continues as evinced by the lower number of major seminarians. Candidates for the priesthood fell from 108,481 in 2022 to 106,495 in 2023 (-1.8 per cent).
This decline affects all continents, except Africa (+1.1 per cent). The most significant change is in Europe (-4.9 per cent), but Asia comes immediately after (-4.2 per cent). This is the result of the demographic winter that has affected many Asian countries for some time and which is getting worse year after year.
Two years ago, the Vatican Yearbook recorded a drop of 2.6 per cent for Asian seminarians, which reached 3.5 per cent last year. If this trend were to continue, it is easy to predict that the expanding pool of Asian priests will shrink, since there will be no generational turnover. It should be noted that 61 per cent of seminarians in the world are trained in Asia and Africa today.
As for deacons, their ranks grew by 2.6 per cent, from 50,150 in 2022 to 51,433 in 2023, mostly in Oceania and the Americas; in Africa and Asia, a slight decline was reported. By contrast, Asia has the lowest ratio of deacons to priests, just 0.5 per cent (13 per cent in the world and 29 per cent in America), understandable since the permanent diaconate is still not widespread in this continent.
Thus, permanent deacons tend to be more present in those areas where priestly turnover appears most problematic, namely in Europe (-1.6 per cent), Oceania (-1.0 per cent), and the Americas (-0.7 per cent).
Finally, the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2023 shows a worldwide decrease in professed religious who are not priests and professed women religious.
This trend has been going on for some time and touches Asia as a whole, except for Southeast Asia that reported a slight increase of 0.1 per cent. Worldwide, professed women religious dropped from 599,228 in 2022 to 589,423 in 2023 (-1.6 per cent). About 30 per cent are in Asia, the second continent after Europe (32 per cent).
The decrease is attributable to greater mortality, particularly among elderly nuns. In the two-year period, the presence of women religious in Europe and North America was downsized, with growth in Asia and Africa. But seen as a whole, their pastoral service is far from negligible. As the Church's Central Statistics Office observes, women religious in the world are 45 per cent greater than the priestly group.
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