The number of Catholics in Croatia has grown by two per cent since
2001, to now include 89.99 per cent of the population, the Vatican
statistics show.
According to data from the Central Statistics
Office of the Church, there are 3,981,000 Catholics in Croatia, 83,668
more than the numbers of 2001 showed.
The Holy See gets the data from parochial records from the numbers of baptisms and deaths.
The Croatian theologian Adalbert Rebic says that there is no reason to doubt the statistics as they are precise.
Such
an increase of two per cent is believable, especially taking into
consideration an influx of Catholic families from Bosnia and Herzegovina
and Vojvodina in Serbia, Rebic says. He adds that these are often
families with many children.
Don Anton Suljic, a Catholic journalist and publisher, is not so certain.
"An
increase of two per cent sounds arbitrary to me. Perhaps we should wait
to see the results of the census."
A new census has just been taken in
Croatia in the last month.
Vatican has registered an increase in
the number of Catholics in the world this year.
In 2009 the number of
baptised believers was 1 billion 181 million, or 15 million more than in
2008.
These results place Croatia at the top of the list of
European states with the biggest number of Catholics togther with
Vatican, Malta, San Marino, Spain, Italy and Poland.