The world’s Catholic population grew in 2013 by slightly more than the overall population, the latest Statistical Yearbook of the Church reports.

The number of Catholic priests also rose in 2012 (the last year for which final statistics are available), as did the number of deacons. However the number of women religious continued a long decline, and the number of seminarians, which had risen in recent years, fell off slightly.

The Yearbook records a population of 1.228 billion Catholics at the close of 2012. That count is probably low by several million, the book notes, because Church officials were unable to supply an accurate count of Catholics in nations where the Church suffers political repression, such as China and North Korea.


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