Is the Catholic Church Growing? Yes, Fastest in Africa

Yes, and fastest in Africa. The Vatican counted just over 1.422 billion Catholics at the end of 2024, up 1.14 percent from about 1.406 billion in 2023, which kept Catholics at 17.8 percent of the world’s population. In Europe the number of Catholics rose only 0.8 percent, and the number of priests fell.

The Vatican counts the baptized, so each of those numbers began with someone at a font. A century ago about two-thirds of the world’s Catholics lived in Europe. Now Africa has more Catholics than Europe, and it trains more than a third of the world’s seminarians. Jesus sent his disciples to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), and his Church is still spreading among them.

How many Catholics are there in the world?

The Church’s own count comes from two annual Vatican publications, the Annuario Pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook) and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae (Statistical Yearbook of the Church), compiled by the Central Office of Church Statistics. The editions published in March 2026 cover 2024. They count baptized Catholics, so a person who was baptized Catholic and no longer practices usually remains in the figures.

At the end of 2024, 47.7 percent of the world’s Catholics lived in the Americas, 20.3 percent in Africa, 20.1 percent in Europe, 11.0 percent in Asia and 0.9 percent in Oceania. Africa’s share rose from 19.9 percent in 2023 while Europe’s fell from 20.4 percent, so Africa now has more Catholics than Europe. Catholics made up 64.0 percent of the population of the Americas, 39.7 percent in Europe, 25.9 percent in Oceania, 19.9 percent in Africa and 3.3 percent in Asia.

The shift has been under way for a century. Pew Research Center estimated in 2013 that the number of Catholics had grown from about 291 million in 1910 to nearly 1.1 billion in 2010. In 1910 about two-thirds of the world’s Catholics lived in Europe; by 2010 about a quarter (24 percent) did. Sub-Saharan Africa went from an estimated 1 million Catholics in 1910 to about 171 million in 2010.

Where is the Catholic Church growing fastest?

In Africa. The number of Catholics there rose from just over 281 million in 2023 to over 288 million in 2024. The Vatican reported that this growth was nearly five times Asia’s rate and faster than the growth of Africa’s population. The Democratic Republic of the Congo alone had nearly 55 million Catholics in 2023.

Africa is also where the clergy and religious are increasing. It was the only continent where the number of seminarians studying philosophy and theology grew in 2024 (up 2.25 percent), and it now trains 34.5 percent of the world’s seminarians. Its permanent deacons increased by 7.0 percent to 8,860, and its women religious by 2.6 percent, while the number of women religious fell on every other continent.

In Asia, where Catholics are 3.3 percent of the population, the Catholic population grew more slowly than the general population. The number of priests there rose from 74,056 to 75,121. The Philippines had about 93 million Catholics in 2023 and India about 23 million. In the Americas, home to nearly half of all Catholics, the Catholic population also grew more slowly than the general population. Brazil had 182 million Catholics in 2023, and South America had more than 7,600 Catholics for every priest in 2024, against just over 1,800 in Europe.

Is the Catholic Church shrinking in Europe?

By the Vatican’s count, no: Europe’s Catholic population grew by 0.8 percent in 2024, the smallest rise of any continent. By most other measures the Church there is contracting, part of a wider decline of Christianity in Europe. Europe had fewer diocesan and religious priests in 2024 than in 2023, and it trains only 11.7 percent of the world’s seminarians.

Figures from individual countries show the trend. In Germany, which records formal departures from the Church, 307,117 people left the Catholic Church in 2025, down from 321,659 in 2024. Germany still had about 19.2 million Catholics, 23 percent of the population, but baptisms fell from 116,274 to 109,028, and 6.8 percent of Catholics attended Sunday Mass, up slightly from 6.6 percent. In Italy, 61.3 percent of the 173,272 weddings held in 2024 were civil ceremonies, up from 52.6 percent in 2019, and the number of religious weddings fell 11.4 percent in a single year.

Is the Catholic Church growing in the United States?

It is holding steady as a share of the population and shrinking in its institutions. Pew Research Center’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study found that 19 percent of American adults identify as Catholic, and Pew’s other surveys put the figure at 20 percent, roughly 53 million adults. The share has been stable since 2014 but is lower than in 2007, when it was 24 percent. Pew found the balance of religious switching “especially lopsided” for Catholicism: 8.4 people raised Catholic have left for every one who has converted, against 1.8 to one for Protestants.

Immigration has kept the numbers up. More than four in ten American Catholics are immigrants (29 percent) or the children of immigrants (14 percent). The Catholic population is now 54 percent white and 36 percent Hispanic; since 2007 the white share has fallen by 10 percentage points and the Hispanic share has risen by 7. About 29 percent of Catholics say they attend Mass every week.

Church records show the institutional decline. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, the United States had 16,125 parishes in 2025, down from 19,620 in 1990, and 33,462 priests, down from 59,192 in 1970. Parishes recorded 471,717 infant baptisms and 107,271 Catholic weddings in 2024, against about 1.09 million baptisms and 426,309 weddings in 1969.

Are there more priests and seminarians?

Worldwide, the number of priests rose by 425 in 2024, to 407,421, with gains in Africa and Asia and losses in Europe. Seminarians fell by 2.72 percent, from 106,495 to 103,604, and baptisms fell 0.6 percent to 13,065,918.

How has the Church responded?

Recent popes have answered the decline in historically Catholic countries with calls for evangelization. Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), wrote that “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (2013), asked for “a ‘missionary option’” so that the Church’s structures would serve “the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” Both were asking the Church to obey the command of Jesus, which stays the same whether a country’s pews are filling or emptying: “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).

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