Number of Catholic Priests Increasing Worldwide

I always like it when my intellectual obsessions intersect. Here we have the conjunction of Catholicism and statistics, from Jimmy Akin. The number of priests and seminarians is up worldwide, according to the Annuario Pontifico (Pontifical Yearbook).

“What about priests and seminarians?”

They’re up, too, worldwide. According to the new Annuario there were an additional 4,000 priests worldwide between 2000 and 2008 (the most recent year of the Annuario’s data), for a total of 409,166 priests. And in just one year (2007-2008) the number of seminarians jumped by 1,000 (total: 117,024).

This tracks with the local experience as well, we have a pretty healthy crop of seminarians in the tube here in the Diocese of Phoenix.