Although more than half of the 115 cardinals who
elected Pope Francis were from Europe, Europeans now make up less than a
quarter of the world's Catholics, CNS reports.The church's relative strength in Europe has declined sharply as the Catholic population worldwide quadrupled over the past century to nearly 1.2 billion, according to the Vatican's statistical yearbook for 2013.
Catholics make up about 16 percent of the world's population, about the same percentage as a century ago. A closer look at where Catholics live illustrates the changing body of the church.
Whereas two-thirds of the world's Catholics lived in Europe in 1910, fewer than a quarter do today, reported the U.S.-based Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life. In Manila, Philippines, there are more baptized Catholics than in traditionally Catholic Netherlands.
France and Germany each boasted twice as many baptized Catholics as Brazil in 1910.
Today Brazil, with 126 million Catholics, has more than three times as many as France or Spain; Mexico, with 96 million Catholics, has 2.5 times as many as France.
Overall, Catholics in Europe have declined from 38.5 percent to 23.7 percent of the population since 1970, according to the World Christian Database compiled by the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary of South Hamilton, Mass.
John Wilkins, former editor of The Tablet, a British Catholic weekly, said the demographic shifts have deep implications for Europe.
"Europe's view of itself as the traditional center (of the church) has long been an anomaly, given the church's steady decline here, so this is bound to change," Wilkins told CNS.
"The perspectives and priorities will be different in the future, and the questions which preoccupy many Europeans, from contraception to women's ordination, may well seem less pressing than the universal issues of poverty and social justice which preoccupy the new pope," Wilkins said.
As priestly vocations and church attendance have plummeted across Europe, Catholic bastions such as Slovakia and Poland provide a third of all European ordinations and a clergy presence throughout the continent.
At the same time, Pope Francis's native Argentina is home to 31 million Catholics, the same number as Germany and Congo, according to the Pew Research Center.
Latin America as a whole was home to a quarter of the world's Catholics a century ago, but now, combined with Caribbean nations, hosts 39 percent; sub-Saharan Africa claimed just 1 percent of worldwide Catholics in 1910 and now has 16 percent.
In Asia and the Pacific, Catholics have multiplied nearly tenfold, from 14 million to 131 million over the century.