MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Muslims outnumber Catholics worldwide reveals Vatican

Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday. Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2% of the world's population and Catholics 17.4%.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us" Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006. He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33% of the world's population, (6.5 billion) or about 2 billion people. The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion. Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates. "This does not mean the number of Catholics has ceased to grow but the world population also increases", said Formenti. At the end of 2006 the number of Catholics increased 1.4% over 2005. He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistic. "Latin America remains the stronghold for Catholicism, while the American continent as a whole has 49.8% of the world's total" he said. Formenti said that the number of Catholic priests was on the rebound, particularly in Asia "where there are few Catholics, but they are driven by great spirit". He described Africa as a "grand resource" for the church, while Europe and North America were struggling. The number of nuns was undergoing a "drastic reduction". As for the enrolment of seminarians, Guadalajara in Mexico had the largest number, with two seminaries "packed full". France, the Netherlands and Belgium were bottom of the league, while Italy was seeing a "small, very small reprise The Vatican's "Red book" as the L'Osservatore describes it, has 2.000 pages and will be released on sale in the coming weeks. The circulation is estimated in 10.000. The 2008 edition is the first since Benedict XVI took office.