How many Catholics in all nations?

1.06 billion in 2001 according to the annual Annuario Pontificio 2002.

Catholic News

"The number of baptised Catholics "has increased worldwide from 757 million in 1978 to 1.06 billion in 2001", according to the new Annuario Pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook).

"The Yearbook points out that there is wide geographical variation in the change, contrasting a 148% increase in Africa the 25 year period with stagnation in Europe."

AGI

"(AGI) - Vatican City, Feb. 8 - The number of Catholics in the world is increasing. The number of people baptised, says the new Pontifical Yearbook, "has increased worldwide, from 757 million in 1978 to 1.06 billion in 2001." The dynamics of such an increase varies from continent to continent: while in Africa there was an increase of 148 pct, in Europe there was a situation of stability, while evident increases were seen in Asia, the Americas, and Oceania."

Thank you for your answer but I misspoke my intended question. I meant to ask if anyome knew of a reference source that could tell me how many Catholics are in each of all the nations of the Earth, individually. Ciao, Dov

Those figures have been reported - according to the media - as estimated figures by the "Vatican's Central Statistics Office".

This office, however, isn't to be found at the Holy See's official website http://www.vatican.va/offices/index.htm

So, I consider, you have to look at each country's statistic office's figures - and hope, they are online.

All I could find was a listing of every country's religious makeup by percentage - you could multiply out those figures if you find each country's population. But I'm sure the actual numbers are out there somewhere. If you really need it bad, I could hunt further.

please check
If you could do a bit of sleuthing for me that was be nice of you; don't spend too much time. It would seem to me that something so basic would be easily obtained. It seems so primary. Thank You, Dov

I again couldn't find any one site that lists all countries and their Catholic populations. It would take a lot of work to find each country's population. One problem is that many countries have old and outdated census information. And the percentages of populations that are catholic, given in many reports, are approximations. Below are a few countries I did find, but this only adds up to about 650 million, which is missing 500 million catholics. And these are 1998 numbers.

Argentina 31,546,000
Brazil 134,818,000
Cape Verde 390,000
Colombia 32,260,000
Costa Rica 3,009,000
Ecuador 10,729,000
El Salvador 5,399,000
France 47,773,000
Germany 28,403,000
Guadeloupe 391,000
Honduras 5,517,000
Ireland 3,372,500
Italy 55,599,000
Luxembourg 386,000
Mexico 86,305,000
Paraguay 4,531,000
Philippines 58,735,000
Poland 36,835,000
Portugal 9,948,000
Saint Pierre and Miquelon 6,000
San Marino 24,714
Spain 36,956,000
USA ~61,000,000
Vatican City 850
Venezuela 19,922,000
Wallis and Futuna Islands 15,000

Thank you, Larry
Thanks for the list. While we're on the subject, I wonder what would happen if the Pope were to issue an edict under the infallibility type call "ex cathedra". If that were to say that good Catholics are forbiden to participate in the war in Iraq. That would be interesting. Ciao, Dov

Catholics Stats by Nations
G'day, stumbled here while i was looking for the number of catholics by nations. Finally found a good source, hopefully i'm not too late!
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/country/sc1.html
God Bless.

that's pretty interesting.
with less than a 2% catholic population india is still 16th overall.
brazil is only 80% catholic now.
nearly half of canada is catholic.
iraq is 12.2% catholic.
iran has catholics.

Thanks, suesue!

And wellcome to A2K - hope you enjoy here and find some more interesting questions and answers!

Gee glad you could make use of it. I'm sure I'll find some useful information from here. Thanks!