VATICAN CITY—If the Second Vatican Council were held today, the Vatican would have to invite more than 4,500 bishops—nearly twice the number that participated in the council.

The seating 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 Pope 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 through Dec. 31, 2000. For number-crunching experts, the book offers everything from global totals of first communicants to analytical charts on priest-to-parishioner 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% in 1978 to just under 17.3% 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% 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. That figure includes 16,500 clinics, 14,000 homes for the elderly, 8,700 orphanages and 11,600 marriage advice centers.

But the exception to that trend is a downturn in the number of Church-run hospitals, which went from 6,640 in 1978 to 5,853 in 2000. That's a worrisome development, and a sign that the Church in many countries — particularly in Europe and the Americas—can no longer afford to maintain big health complexes.

In almost every category, what the yearbook calls the Church's “workforce for the apostolate” has increased. In some cases, like catechists, it's been a genuine explosion, while in other areas, like diocesan clergy, it's a tenuous rise. The year 2000 saw an increase of 769 diocesan priests in the world, and the Vatican will gladly take that.

The number of permanent deacons also has enjoyed a steady increase during Pope John Paul's pontificate, going from about 5,000 in 1978 to nearly 28,000 today.

But the population of men and women religious continues to drop—though the rate of decrease has slowed. Male religious priests today number about 139,000 compared to 158,000 in 1978, and women religious have gone from 985,000 to 801,000 in the same period.

Church experts seeking consolation can turn to the pages that break down those numbers by continent and by country: In many dioceses of Africa and Asia, the numbers of religious have risen significantly over the last two decades.

The Vatican also found hopeful signs in the continued increase in the number of the world's seminarians. There were 62,000 seminarians at the higher education level in 1978, and more than 110,000 at the end of 2000. The biggest increases have come in Africa, Asia and South America.

One statistic the Vatican doesn't mind seeing drop is the number of annulment requests handled by diocesan and regional tribunals around the world. The new annulment cases introduced have actually decreased slightly over the last 22 years, from about 77,000 to 75,000.

One trend the Vatican has carefully tracked over the years is the number of marriages between a Catholic and a non-Catholic. The rate of mixed marriages seems to have peaked in the 1990s at close to 9% and has now leveled off at 8%.

Europe is the only continent that has shown an increase in mixed marriages under Pope John Paul II, but the rate has dropped substantially there over the last two years, too.