Analyzing the data published by the "Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2003," the semi-official Vatican newspaper reported last week that overall, the number of priests has decreased over the past 25 years from 421,000 to 405,000, but since 1988 there has been a "very slight" tendency to recovery.
Read the complete article at Religious Priests Down, Diocesan Priests Up from Zenit News Agency.
Also at Zenit is this: Seminarians Double In 25 Years. Africa and Asia have seen increasing numbers of seminarians that have countered the decrease in Europe and the flat number in the United States.
Increasingly in places like the US and Europe, parishes are staffed by priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America, who bring their own ideas and culture that are often quite different from those of the people they are sent to serve. If this trend continues to develop, the African or Asian or Latin American Pope is not going to be far off, simply because bishops and cardinals are going to have to be drawn from the seminaries of the Third World.
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