In his rambling plea to Christians to preserve their culture in order to keep him feeling safe, Richard Dawkins commented that the number of Christians is declining globally.
He may of course have been discussing Anglicanism rather than Christianity as a whole.
In the case of Catholicism, he is incorrect however, though knowing Dawkins he might not even consider us to be Christians.
In statistics released by the Vatican in its Statistical Yearbook of the Church, the numbers of Catholics are revealed to have risen between 2021 and 2022. They went from 1.376 billion in 2021 to 1.390 billion in 2022.
Some of the interesting stats:
Africa increased numbers of Catholics by 265 to 273 million
The global number of priests fell by 142
The numbers of deacons increased by 1,000
Religious women fell from 608,000 to 599,00
The numbers of women religious increased in both Asia and Africa, while decreasing elsewhere
The numbers of men studying for the priesthood decreased everywhere globally apart from in Africa
Overall, the church has certainly its problems, particularly with vocations, but the global picture is still a relatively healthy one.
