with the Vicar of Christ 1' 111 MAY
HONDA
• .
A
TEL: 9449 9000
General:
432 SC.ARBOROL BEACH RD OSBORNE PARK.
the hope ot the GCSL,'
Missionary: That, 'hit:- me -,e ,p of Mary.
DI MAI
Most Holy Virgin and Mother. Me soca! and _
FOR A GREAT DEAL ON A NEW HONDA, PARTS, ACCESSORIES, SERVICE, FINANCE OR ANY MAKE OF QUALITY USED CAR.
WA's only Catholic weekly newspaper Perth: May 16 2002 Price: $1
By John Thavis
/
fa third Vatican council were held today, the Vatican would have to invite more than 4,500 bishops - nearly twice the number that participated in Vatican II. The sealing section for cardinals would have to be doubled, too. In 1962 there were 85 princes of the church: today there are 176. The numbers keep going up, and not just at the top of the church hierarchy. Since 1Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978, the number of lay missionaries has grown from about 3,000 to 126,000. The number of catechists has increased 15-fold, from 173,000 to 2.6 million. The Vatican published its Statistical Yearbook of the Church in May, with statistics updated to December 31, 2000. For number-crunching experts, the book offers everything from global totals of first communicants to analytical charts on priest-toparishioner ratios. Year after year. most of the raw numbers in this volume continue to rise. The ones that don't often flag a problem. For those who track such things, world Catholic population reached 1.45 billion at the end of 2000 - up 12 million over the previous year. That doesn't include places like China. where Catholics can't be accurately counted, so you probably could add up to 5 million to the global figure. The down side: the percentage of Catholics in the global population has dropped from 17.8 per cent in 1978 to just under 17.3 per cent at the end of 2000. So the general population is growing faster than the church. The fastest church growth continues to occur in Africa, which saw its Catholic population jump nearly 5 per cent during the jubilee year - from 124 million to 130 million. But a flag went up when Vatican officials saw the tally of Catholics for Europe - a drop of 1.5 million Catholics in a single year, even as the continent's population grew by 18 million. It was the fifth straight annual decline in Europe, the only place in the world where the Catholic population is going down. During the current pontificate, the church's social role has grown across the world, and it's reflected in the numbers: more than 103,000 church-run health and social institutions, compared to 64,000 in 1978. Continued Page 2
Archbishop writes Pentecost letter to Year 12 students Archbishop Barry Hickey has written a Pastoral Letter to Year 12 students. His message to them is "to believe that Christ has called you to act in his name, and ask the Holy Archbishop Hickey Spirit to guide you in the choices you make". Comparing their situation to the early Church at the time of Pentecost, he wrote: "God has prepared you for action. He is asking you, as members of the Church. the Body of Christ, to carry the light of truth into the world" Archbishop's letter - Page 2
A church window at St Mary's Cathedral in Winnipeg, Canada, depicts a scene from Pentecost. The feast marks the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles 50 days after Christ's resurrection. Pentecost is Greek for the 50th day. It is also referred to as the birthday of the Church because, from that point on, the apostles carried forth the message of Christ to the world.