VATICAN CITY
Naharnet (Lebanon)
The number of Catholic priests and believers in the world is on the rise, a Vatican report showed on Monday, with gains in Africa and Asia offsetting a slump in Europe and the Americas.
The world’s Catholics rose from 1.196 billion to 1.214 billion between 2010 and 2011, an increase of 1.5 percent, according to the Church’s annual statistics report.
The gain outstripped the increase in the global population, which rose by 1.23 percent over the same period, the report said.
The biggest rise among believers was seen in Africa (up 4.3 percent) and Asia (up 2.0 percent), while America while numbers in Europe were broadly flat, up 0.3 percent.
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