The church recognises over 10,000 saints. Canonisation is approved by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints; the Vatican's criteria require a candidate to have been dead for at least five years and to have performed verified miracles. The Vatican maintains that it does not "make" saints but merely anoints their already-existing virtue.
More saints have been canonised in the past 40 years than the previous 400. Pope Francis canonised around 800 in one go in 2013, more than had been canonised from the 16th century to the 20th; that batch consisted of a backlog of martyrs from the 15th century. Pope John Paul II sped up the canonisation process and made an effort to canonise saints from outside Europe, reflecting the growth of Catholicism in other parts of the world.
Of the 388 saints with known birthplaces, 156 were born in Italy. In September 2025 Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006, became the first millennial saint.
According to the World Christian Database, 32% of Europeans were Catholic in 2025, down from 37% in 1975.
By 2025 the continent was home to roughly 270m baptised Catholics, according to the World Christian Database—a 140-fold increase over a century, when Africans made up barely 1% of the world's Catholics. At the current pace, as many as half the world's Catholics could be in Africa by 2066, a shift compared by some to the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. Latin America still has the lion's share with two-fifths of the global flock; Africa has about a fifth.
No Roman pontiff set foot below the Sahara until 1969. Africans account for only 12% of cardinals below the age of 80 (who select the pope). The number of priests declined in most of the world in 2023; in Africa it grew by nearly 3%. The same was true of seminarians. The Society of Jesus has begun relocating parts of its archives from Europe to Africa to meet demand from scholars and seminarians. There are about 455,000 Christian missionaries worldwide, of whom about 30% are Catholic and a steadily rising share African.
One in nine pupils in primary education in Africa attends a Catholic school. In much of Congo, where there is a nationwide network of Catholic schools, universities and hospitals, the church is, in effect, a surrogate for the state. The church's bishops have long helped mediate between the country's warring factions, monitor elections and back pro-democracy movements.
The "Zairean rite" is a form of Catholic liturgical services adapted to Congolese culture, incorporating tom-tom drums, electric guitars and lively choral music.
In 2023 the Vatican permitted priests to bless same-sex couples, while making clear this was neither a holy rite like marriage nor an endorsement of homosexuality. The outcry from African bishops was so vehement that Francis in effect granted them an opt-out—a rare practice for the church. On both occasions when Francis's authority was openly challenged, it was by African cardinals pushing for more conservative guidelines: once on liturgy and once regarding gay couples.
A conference of African bishops proposed welcoming more people in polygamous marriages into the church—an assault on the conventional understanding of one of the seven sacraments. On questions of sexuality and gender, Catholic leaders in Africa have been at the forefront of efforts to promote "family values", restrict abortion rights and promote laws against homosexuality, sometimes allying with rival denominations such as Pentecostals or Mormons.
The Holy Cross Catholic Church in Nairobi, Kenya, a branch of the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X, delivers its liturgy in Latin, shorn of Kenyan cultural expressions. Its services are so packed that a bigger chapel needs to be built.
In 2025 over half a million people walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, up from a few thousand in the late 1980s.
There's no future in time travel.