"Newly published statistics showed that the number of men and women belonging to religious orders fell by 10% to just under a million between 2005 and 2006.
During the pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II, the number of Catholic nuns worldwide declined by a quarter.
The downward trend accelerated despite a steady increase in the membership of the Catholic Church to more than 1.1bn. However, correspondents say even this failed to keep pace with the overall increase in world population.
[...]The number of members, predominantly women, some engaged only in constant prayer, others working as teachers, health workers and missionaries, fell 94,790 to 945,210.Of the total, 753,400 members were women, while 191,810 were men, including 136,171 priests and 532 permanent deacons."BBC, 5 February 2008
You know they're in trouble when even the Catholics can't keep up with the population growth!
commercial-archive.com
No comments:
Post a Comment