Africa Has More Catholics than Europe

EWTN, citing to statistics compiled by Agenzia Fides, reports that Africa now has a larger Catholic population than Europe (288.3 million to 287.2 million). I would have guessed that was the case before reading, but now we have one measure. Agenzia Fides also reported on other regions:

The Americas remain the continent with the largest Catholic population: 678,869,000, representing 64% of the continent’s population. Africa has 288,312,000 Catholics, surpassing Europe, where the total number is 287,240,000. Asia follows with 156,166,000 Catholics, while Oceania has 11,557,000.
The percentage of the Catholic population in all continents: 19.9% in Africa, 39.7% in Europe, 3.3% in Asia and 25.9% in Oceania.

Agenzia Fides explains that these statistics refer to June 30, 2024.

As EWTN noted, the statistics do not distinguish between North America and South America, combining them as the Americas. I suspect that Asia is difficult to get a handle on because of uncertainty about the number of Christians generally, and Catholics especially, in China.

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