The number of Catholics worldwide rose by 16,690,000 in 2024, to 1,422,144,000, according to data published by Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, ahead of World Mission Sunday. At the end of 2024, as at the end of 2023, 17.8% of the world’s population was Catholic.
The number of priests rose by 425 in 2024, to 407,421, ending five years of decline.
The statistics are not new: they come from the 2024 edition of the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae, which was published in March. During 2024—the last full year of Pope Francis’s reign—the 13-year decline in the number of seminarians accelerated.