Muslims outnumber Catholics, says Vatican | April 01, 2008

VATICAN CITY: The number of Muslims has overtaken the number of Roman Catholics in the world, a Vatican official said on Sunday.

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Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican’s 2008 yearbook, said Muslims made up 19.2% of the world’s population, and Catholics 17.4%.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to the year 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33% of the world’s population - or about 2 billion people.

The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion. It did not provide a figure for Muslims. But applying the percentages to the 2006 world population of about 6.5 billion, Muslims would have made up 1.25 billion.

Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world’s population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

While the data on religious groups is generally known from other statistical sources, it is significant that the Vatican has chosen to draw attention to the numbers and what it sees as the causes behind them.