WORLD membership of the Catholic Church, at 613,760,000, is the largest of any Church, according to figures published last week by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservalore Romano..
There are 272,018,000 Protestants and 142,433.000 Orthodox. The 2.292 million non-Christians are composed of 509 million Moslems, 444 million Hindus, 13,960,000 Jews and 1,326 million listed as Animists, Shintoists, Buddhists, etc.
Europe has the largest number of Catholics at 255 million, followed by Latin America with 226 million and North America with 55 million. There are 47 million in Asia, 32 million in Africa and four million in Oceania.
The statistics show that while developing nations account for 49.84 per cent. of the world's Catholics, they have only 22 per cent of the world's priests. Europe has 1,027,000 priests, friars and nuns, or well over half the world total. North America has 360,000, Latin America 195,000, Asia 110,000, and Africa 63,500.