Muslims more numerous than Catholics: Vatican

Reuters

Sun Mar 30, 2008 2:29pm

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent. (In almost all western nations the number of Roman Catholics have been dwindling since the 1970’s – This is part of the curses of Deuteronomy; “I will make you few”)

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006. (There is fear in Rome as they clearly see what will shortly come to pass, and there is none to stay the hand of judgment that shall rise against them. This is why the Pope is meeting with Muslim leaders all over the place seeking to make what agreements they can while they still have clout,)

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people. (I have seen higher estimates of 4 billion of the worlds 7 billion population – Either way The Church [The Klesia] is the largest mission field in the world, and the second largest mission field is Muslimism.)

Deuteronomy 28:38-39 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it. Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them. (The fruit of the field of the Klesia which sows billions into the fields is little, as the locusts [Wolves in shepherds clothing] consume the crop. These work the vineyards and gather no grapes because the worms of their Talmudic doctrines and traditions breed within their grapes and eat them from the inside out, so that virtually nothing is left.)

Psalm 107:33-34 He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground; (He also turneth) A fruitful land into (Fields of) barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. (The mission fields of the Klesia and Islam are left a wilderness, the fruitfulness thereof that could be is instead barrenness, a rebuke and testimony against the church of this hour.)

The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.

Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.

(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi; editing by Andrew Roche)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUKL3068682420080330