With 2.36 priests per 1,000 inhabitants, Malta is the country with the highest percentage of priests in the world, but then it is only 194th in the world for fertility, with 50 per cent less births than the US.The first Catholic countries on this world index are only found after the 56th place and these are Latin American countries.
As for the European Catholic countries (Hungary, Poland, Austria, Spain, France) their birthrate is around 10 per 10,000.
Only in Ireland is it 14, the same rate as in Sweden, which has 80 times less priests than Ireland.
Last week, Aprile online, an Italian leftist website, carried an article by Stefano Rizzo which made a curious but interesting correlation between the number of Catholic priests in any country and the way people actually behave.
With the current discussion in Italy regarding the government’s plan to introduce civil pacts that allow the registration of life-sharing pacts between gay or lesbian couples as its background, the article tries to establish if the number of priests in any country has any influence on how the people actually behave.
It finds that while Italy has 0.88 priests per 1,000 inhabitants there are only 0.27 divorces for every 1,000 inhabitants, which is the same as Brazil where there are 10 times less priests than in Italy.
And Portugal, with 0.4 priests per 1,000 inhabitants has three times as many divorces (0.9) as Turkey or Mongolia where there are no priests at all.
Artificial contraception is banned by the Church but 80 per cent of Spaniards, Brazilians and Colombians use contraceptives regularly along with 60 per cent of Italians and 64 per cent of Turks.
Only 32 per cent of the Saudis, 28 per cent of the Emirates and just six per cent of the people in Chad, Eritrea and Mozambique use them – but that is probably because they do not have the money to buy them.
As for abortion, the rate is 10 times smaller in Hinduist India (0.55 per 1,000 women) and 70 times smaller in Orthodox Greece (0.11) than in Catholic Hungary (7.7).
The rate in Italy is 2.3, almost as much as in Japan (2.6). Catholic France has the same rate as Hebrew Israel.
As for children born outside marriage, these are highest in permissive northern Europe (55 per cent of all children born in Sweden, 51 per cent in Norway) but they are high as well in Hungary (35 per cent) and in Portugal (31 per cent).
They are on the low side in Italy (17.3) with its 50,000 priests but they are even lower in Switzerland (13.7), which has just 3,000 priests, and very low in Greece.
As for the use of soft drugs, this is highest in Australia and New Zealand (around 18 per cent), around half this in Catholic Ireland and Spain but even lower (four per cent) in Lutheran Denmark and almost absent in Shintoist Japan (0.05).
And while the faithful are urged to help the poor, only six per cent of the Irish and Belgians, five per cent of the French, and only three per cent in Italy admit to doing this compared to 15 per cent of Americans and 18 per cent of Australians.
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