Catholic Faith Gaining In Third World Countries

Interest in the Roman Catholic priesthood is waning in Europe and North America but growing everywhere else, according to Vatican figures released Saturday.

The statistics on seminary enrollment support a longtime trend: The demographic center of the faith is shifting to poorer and less industrialized nations.

The same regions of the world are also gaining influence in Catholic decision-making circles, albeit at a much slower pace.

A record 62 countries are represented in the College of Cardinals, the group that selects the pope. Although Italians and Americans form the two largest blocs, the number of cardinals from Asia, Latin America and Africa has jumped significantly under the papacy of John Paul II.

In recent decades, Africa has seen the biggest percentage increase in enrollment at seminaries, where priests-to-be spend their final years of study before ordination. Between 1970 and 1994, the number of seminarians in Africa rose from 3,470 to 17,125.

Since the late 1920s, Africa’s Catholic population has swelled from 3.2 million to nearly 90 million, although some members have switched to independent churches that fuse Western and tribal rites.

In Southeast Asia, seminary enrollment more than doubled from 1970-94 to 23,943, the Vatican said.

Latin American showed similar gains. In South America, there were 17,808 seminarians in 1994, up from 5,041 in 1970. Central American seminarians doubled in enrollment to 8,435 over the same period.

In Europe and North America, the trend is reversed.

European seminarian enrollment fell from 33,971 to 29,511 in the 24 years.

The drop in North America was even greater: from 14,365 to 5,692.

Worldwide, the number of men studying to be priests rose from 72,991 in 1970 to 105,075 in 1994.