Muslims overtake Catholics in denomination stakes
Published: March 31, 2008
For the first time in history, Muslims now outnumber Catholics and are now the world's biggest single religious denomination, figures published by L'Osservatore Romano reveal.
Times Online reports that in an interview with the paper Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, compilier of the Annuario Pontificio, the Vatican yearbook, said "For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us." He said that figures for 2006 showed that Catholics accounted for 17.4 per cent of the world population while Muslims accounted for 19.2 per cent.
Asked for an explanation Monsignor Formenti observed that "While Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer". He said the figure for the Muslim global population was derived from data submitted to the United Nations by Muslim countries.
The Vatican puts the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people, while the figure for Muslims is estimated at around 1.3 billion.
However, Christians of all denominations still comprise 33 per cent of the world population.
"Latin America remains the stronghold for Catholicism, while the American continent as a whole has 49.8% of the world's total," Monsignor Formenti said.
Noting the decline in numbers of Catholic priests, Monsignor Formenti added that the number of Catholic priests was on the rebound, particularly in Asia, a Guardian report adds.
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. France, the Netherlands and Belgium were bottom of the league, while Italy was seeing a "small, very small reprise".
The figures were released as both the Vatican and Muslim leaders sought to pursue a recently initiated Muslim-Catholic dialogue despite tensions over Pope Benedict XVI's high profile baptism at Easter of Magdi Allam, a converted Italian Muslim journalist of Egyptian origin.
Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, said the opinions of Mr Allam, an outspoken critic of Islam as inherently violent and repressive, were not in any way "the official expression of the positions of the Pope or the Holy See".
Rome has Europe's largest mosque, opened in 1995 and paid for by Muslim countries, mainly by Saudi Arabia, which at present bans Christian worship but is reported to be considering allowing the construction of a church on Saudi soil as part of negotiations for the establishment of diplomatic relations.
In a provocative short story entitled "The Last Christmas" (L'Ultimo Natale) the popular Italian writer Valerio Massimo Manfredi imagines a future in which Islam has become the dominant religion in Italy, with the Pope obliged to leave St Peter's and make way for an Imam.
SOURCE
Islam overtakes Catholicism as world's largest religion (Times Online, 31/3/08)
Muslims displace Catholics at the top (The Guardian, 31/3/08)
OTHER STORIES
Vatican: convert who slammed Islam doesn't express pope's views (International Herald Tribune, 31/3/08)
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