{"id":581,"date":"2008-03-31T16:24:09","date_gmt":"2008-03-31T16:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat.php"},"modified":"2008-03-31T16:24:09","modified_gmt":"2008-03-31T16:24:09","slug":"muslims-more-numerous-than-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat","title":{"rendered":"Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press &#8211; March 30, 2008 <\/strong><br \/>\nVATICAN CITY &#8211; Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world&#8217;s largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.<br \/>\n&#8220;For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us,&#8221; Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L&#8217;Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican&#8217;s yearbook.<br \/>\nHe said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population &#8211; a stable percentage &#8211; while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.<br \/>\n&#8220;It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer,&#8221; the monsignor said.<br \/>\nFormenti said that the data refer to 2006. The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.<br \/>\nWhen considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said.<br \/>\nSpokesmen for the Vatican and the United Nations did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Sunday.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press &#8211; March 30, 2008 VATICAN CITY &#8211; Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world&#8217;s largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday. &#8220;For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us,&#8221; Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L&#8217;Osservatore Romano. Formenti&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press &#8211; March 30, 2008 VATICAN CITY &#8211; Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world&#8217;s largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday. &#8220;For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us,&#8221; Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L&#8217;Osservatore Romano. 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Formenti&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-03-31T16:24:09+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat","name":"Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-31T16:24:09+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-31T16:24:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/muslims-more-numerous-than-cat#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Muslims More Numerous Than Catholics"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}