Posted on 03/14/2023 11:13:09 AM PDT by ebb tide
As Pope Francis’ 10 year anniversary upon the papal throne is welcomed by his loyal supporters, the Vatican has released data showing the number of seminarians has continued the steady decrease which began in 2013.
On March 3, the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published the latest statistics on the state of the Catholic Church across the world. The data is from December 2021.
According to the data, the number of Catholics globally numbers 1.378 billion, having risen from 1.360 billion in 2020. L’Osservatore Romano noted that this was a growth of 1.3% which is slightly less than the Earth’s population growth during the same time, which was 1.6%.
The total number of clerics dropped by 0.39% since 2020 to 462,388. This figures is composed of 5,340 bishops, 407,872 priests, and 49,176 permanent deacons.
For priests in particular the decline was 0.57%. Interestingly, though, the report noted that while diocesan priests have dropped in number by 0.32%, the number of priests in religious order has actually increased by 1.1%.
However, one of the key aspects related to the numbers of clergy is the data regarding the amount of seminarians in the Church. This number has continued to decline — a decline which has been in effect since Pope Francis took office in 2013, as L’Osservatore Romano wrote:
The time trend for the number of major seminarians observed in the world, starting in 2013, denotes an uninterrupted decrease that continues in 2021. In this year, the number of seminarians stands at 109,895, distributed 61 percent among diocesan seminarians and the remaining 39 percent among religious.
Such a figure is the lowest since 1999.
As the newspaper noted, this is a decrease of 1.8% compared to the 2020, meaning that the number of seminarians is decreasing at a faster rate than the number of priests. In fact, the 2021 figures show that seminarian numbers are declining at over three times the rate of priests.
This is represented in the ratio of major seminarians to number of Catholics. In 2020 there were 8.23 major seminarians for every 100,000 Catholics, which dropped to 7.99 by the end of 2021.
Such a trend has been marked since the start of Pope Francis’ pontificate, and even just prior to it. For while they numbered 120,616 in 2011, in 2013 they numbered 118,251 – dropping over 2,000 in two years. That decline accelerated with the advent of Francis, however, with a drop down to 116,939 in 2014.
According to the dataset provided, the general number of vocations to the priesthood is also dropping, not merely the number of major seminarians. L’Osservatore Romano wrote there are now only 26.84 vocations for every 100 priests already ordained.
Conversely, the number of permanent deacons continues to rise, a trend which has been stable for a number of years after an initial explosion in numbers after Vatican II. There are now 49,176 permanent deacons according to L’Osservatore Romano.
What the statistics do show though, is that the Catholic Church is growing in Africa generally. The number of seminarians saw its only growth globally in the continent. Though Catholics in under are less than 20% of the population generally, the Church recorded its biggest growth there during 2021 – 3.1%.
It is notable, therefore, that despite Pope Francis’ regularly repeated remarks to seminarians about compassion and the need for synodality, that such talking points have not led to a growth in vocations. Rather, they appear to have precipitated a decline.
In spite of this dramatic and continued decline, the Vatican is continuing its against devotees of the traditional Mass, releasing further restrictions only last month, with even more expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Bergoglio will be responsible for the elimination of that priesthood he hates so much.
Ping
You know I’m not a fan of Francis, but this would also corelate to Benedict’s resignation. That was a very discouraging event.
Would you think it related to secular employment also having trouble finding workers?
How can something drop by .57% when its component parts are a drop of .32 and an increase of 1.1?
At least one bit of math is off.
I think it’s just an indication that there are many more diocesan priests, as a whole, than there are religious order priests.
“Would you think it related to secular employment also having trouble finding workers?”
I think that’s way too broad a group to compare. Maybe I’d compare Priestly vocations to those who want to be Marines or Navy Seals or Brain Surgeons. A much smaller “elite” group.
After looking at the original article, I think it’s clerics of all orders declining by 0.32% and diocesan priests declining by 0.57%.
Nah, the problem is Bergoglio himself. I’ve heard that American bishops admit off the record that they’ve never met a diocesan seminarian who says that Bergoglio inspired his vocation. The guys joining up now are still talking about B16 and JP2.
Note the uptick between 2005 and 2012, during Pope Benedict’s papacy.
Don’t disagree with that, just making the point that Francis is at the end of a long decline. The underlying problem began in the 1950’s with the growth of the modernist infiltration (Granted they had to be somewhat covert under Pius XII- but even under his reign they were starting to effect the seminaries).
How else can we explain the majorities (or at least near majorities) that the modernists were able to obtain in 1962- which convinced John XXIIIrd to redo all the commissions of Vatican 2?
Dodd mentioned that the communists focused on the Seminaries when they went about infiltrating the Church. (Get them while their young!)
It would be interesting to look at the number of Seminarians in more traditional dioceses in the 1950’s to see if there was a delay in the decline. For example, Cardinal McIntyre in Los Angeles supposedly was tenacious in keeping modernists/liberals out. Unfortunately the data is hard to find (likely because of how embarrassing it is to the current powers that be).
Agree!
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