The Vatican says the number of men and women belonging to Catholic religious orders is on the decline.Statistics published in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano show that in 2006 there were 945,210 men and women in religious orders worldwide.
The newspaper says that was 94,790 fewer than in the previous year.
But Vatican spokesman Rev. Ciro Benedettini later corrected that figure to a decrease of 7,230, saying the newspaper had overstated the decline.
The Vatican also says the total number of priests worldwide stood at 405,000 in 2006, an increase of 600 diocesan clerics.
The overwhelming majority in religious orders are women.
The Vatican has long lamented a decrease in the number of vocations in Europe and elsewhere in recent years, while the number of priests has increased in Africa and Asia.
The newspaper report did not give a reason for the most recent decline.
Pope Benedict said in a 2005 speech to Italian priests that the West was "a world that is tired of its own culture, a world that has arrived at a time in which there's no more evidence of the need for God, much less Christ, and in which it seems that man alone can make himself."
Mentioning Australia, Europe and the United States, the pontiff said in that speech that "one sees that the great churches appear to be dying."
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