The numbers game: Stats give picture of Pope John Paul's pontificate

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Under Pope John Paul II's 26-year papacy, the Catholic Church grew by 45 percent, struggled to replace priests and religious, and experienced a significant "graying" of its hierarchy, according to statistics released recently by the Vatican. In a sense, the statistics complete a by-the-numbers portrait of Pope John Paul's pontificate. They cover the period from 1978, the year of his election, through the end of 2004, three months before he died. The worldwide Catholic population increased by 342 million during that time, from 757 million to just under 1.1 billion. That sounds huge, but it was actually slightly less than the rate of general population increase. As a result, Catholics as a percentage of the world population decreased from about 18 percent in 1978 to about 17.2 percent at the end of 2004.