![]() ![]() ![]() There’s a headwind, I would say, against the Church.” So there’s good news there, but there’s still a lot to weather. And the Catholic Church has come out of these better than many other Christian denominations. “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. “I don’t know if the Catholic world has changed as much as just the world has changed,” Mark Gray, senior researcher with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, told CNA. 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.Ī 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. The number of marriages declined by 702,246, or nearly a third. During the same period, the world’s population as a whole grew by 9.1%, according to the World Bank.ĭespite this increase, the Church performed 2 million fewer baptisms in 2020 than in 2013. The total number of Catholics worldwide grew from 1.253 billion in 2013 to 1.378 billion in 2021, an increase of nearly 10%. Statistically speaking, the Church has grown, keeping pace with and even exceeding overall world population growth. How has the worldwide Catholic Church changed since then? Pope Francis was elected to the papacy 10 years ago, on March 13, 2013.
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