Catholic Church Statistics 2010 - 23/02/2010 14:48:36
According to the Pontifical Yearbook 2010 the Catholic Church has increased since last year in all areas, Laity, Priests and Seminarians, especially in Asia and Africa.
Baptised Catholics increased by 19 million to 1.17 Billion among 6.7 billion people, so the percentage rose from 17.33% to 17.4%.
Priests, both diocesan and Religious, increased by 1% over the past 10 years from 405,178 to 409,166, while Bishops were up 1.13% from 4946 to 5002. However women religious decreased drastically over the ten years from 801,185 to 739,67, a drop of almost 8%.
Regional differences show greatest variations. Europe had 52% of all priests but this is now down to 47%, but Bishops are up 1%. Sisters are down from 59% to 41% and seminarians down 4%
In the Americas we see no change in the number of priests with 30% of the world’s priests in the Americas, north and south. The Americas have seen a 2% increase in Bishops and the seminarian numbers are stable but sisters are down 13%.
Africa has 9% of the world’s priests. There has been an increase of 2% in Bishops; 21% increase in Sisters and 4% increase in Seminarians.
In Asia there are 13% of the world’s priests while Bishops have increased by 1% and sisters have increased by 17% and seminarians BY 5%.
Finally, in Oceania there are 1% of priests. However the percentage of bishops has dropped by 3%, while sisters are stable and seminarians have increased by 7%.
SPIRITAN Brother Clement and the Clementine - 08/11/2009 12:16:12
Clément Rodier was born in the village of Mabeille, in the diocese of Clermont-Ferrant, on May 25th, 1839. At the age of 13, he followed one of his uncles to the Charterhouse at Vallebonne, but his health was not good enough to support the rigours of the life of a hermit. So he joined another uncle, who was a professed religious in the Institute of the Annunciation at Misserghin, Algeria. This house was an orphanage in the middle of a large estate of some 1,000 hectares. Later, this religious family became part of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost Fathers). Clément was put in charge of the huge garden, where he planted 35 hectares of grapes which were still producing fruit up until 1960. He also established a tree nursery of some 20 hectares and imported seeds from different countries and continents. He sold many fruit trees to the French colonialists in the region of Oran. He was particularly proud of his rose garden, even though he had had no formal training in the cultivation of trees. He then moved into grafting, experimenting with different combinations of trees and he kept meticulous notes of all his experiments and the results, which unfortunately have since been lost. It is said that the children from the village used to creep in and steal some mandarins he had produced without pips in a corner of the garden that he had almost forgotten about. Finally, he decided to try them himself and found that they were delicious! According to Doctor Louis Trabut, a medical professor in Algiers who often came to inspect these experiments, Brother Clément accidentally created a hybrid by grafting a mandarin tree onto a bigaroon cherry tree. This took place in 1900 and at first, it was known as the “mandarinette”. When the botanists got to know about this new type of citrus fruit, the original tree was taken away so it is no longer possible to trace the details of its development. Brother Clément died in 1904, having received the gold medal from the Agricultural Society of Algeria for his discovery. Twenty years after his death, this same society baptised the fruit the “Clémetine” in his honour. For more than 40 years, Brother Rodier kept readings of the temperature and rainfall at Misserghin, but it was above all the Clementine that brought him a degree of fame. Fr. Roger Tabard, Assistant General Spiritan Archivist300 Years since Founder's Death. October 2009 - 25/09/2009 16:48:56
Claude Poullart des Places On October 2nd 2009 we celebrate the 300th anniversary of the death of the founder of the Spiritans, Claude-François Poullart des Places.He was born in 1679 into a well-off family at Rennes in Brittany and was given a good religious and secular education by the Jesuits At the age of 20, with glowing prospects for a career in law and a good marriage lined up for him by his family, he suddenly left all this security to follow the uncertain search for God. He felt called to the priesthood.
He started his studies in the College of Louis le Grand in the Latin Quarter of Paris. While he himself had no shortage of funds, he soon discovered that some of the students were living in crushing poverty. He decided to help one of them, then one thing led to another and he left his comfortable situation to live with ten of these destitute scholars. He shared their extreme poverty to the extent of begging on their behalf for the leftovers from the kitchen of his old college.
Aged 23, he founded the Community of the Holy Spirit so that he give these penniless future priests a training that was better and longer than most of their contemporaries.
By the time he was 29, his identification with the poor reached its completion. During the exceptionally hard winter of 1709, he gave everything he had to the others and succumbed to the epidemic that hit Paris and was buried in a pauper's grave. In serving the poor, he became the poorest of all, giving himself totally, not just for humanitarian reasons but above all, in imitation of Jesus.
Shortly after his death, his small congregation was given the task of training and supplying priests for the French colonies in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, and steadily grew in reputation until the French Revolution.
In 1848, a new missionary congregation founded by François Libermann, a convert Jew, united with the foundation of Poullart des Places to form The Congregation of the Holy Ghost. While continuing with the training of priests for overseas, this new religious family concentrated on sharing the message of Jesus with those who had not yet heard it, above all, the people of Africa. Today we number around 3,000 members, half of whom are from Africa and elsewhere in the southern hemisphere working in 58 different countries.
We ask you to join us in thanking God for the countless blessings he has given to our family over the last 300 years. Nobody would be more surprised to see how we have grown and expanded throughout the world than Claude Poullart des Places, the poor rich man who gave himself so completely to the sharing of the Good News.
KIBANDA: Lending a helping hand - 01/06/2009 18:02:41
Spiritans in Africa, Asia and South America live and work with the poorest people of our planet. They live and work among the people they serve, not only in the overcrowded slums of great cities such as Nairobi in Kenya, Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, but also in the most isolated towns and villages, where basic services such as health and education are all too often absent, or very poorly established.
This is why the Spiritan Congregation in Europe has established KIBANDA. The name of the centre was chosen specially. KIBANDA is a word in Swahili, one of the most widely spoken languages of Africa. KIBANDA is the name given to a grass-roofed, open-walled hut, usually situated at the centre of the african village. It is in a kibanda that the elders come together to discuss practical issues and resolve disputes. There they plan ahead for the life and welfare of the whole village.
