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Statistics on church in Japan Print E-mail
Written by Catholic Weekly   
Monday, 30 July 2007
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Japan has published its Statistics of the Catholic Church in Japan 2006.

The entire number of Catholics (clergy and religious included) numbered 452,571 at the end of 2006, roughly the same as 2005, and exceeded 450,000 for the third consecutive year. About 60 percent of Japan's Catholics are women. Because this census is based on parochial registers, those who are not registered at a parish, generally foreigners, are not included.

The Tokyo archdiocese has the largest number of Catholics. The next three are Nagasaki archdiocese, Osaka archdiocese and Yokohama diocese. (See below for a listing of all dioceses).

As of the end of 2006, there were 1,553 bishops and priests, of whom 926 are Japanese and 627 are foreign citizens. There were 38 deacons, 28 of whom were Japanese. Seminarians totalled 138 and 58 others were enrolled in pre-seminary programs.

One in every 75 Catholics in Japan was a female religious. There were 6,060 Japanese sisters and 372 foreigners. There were 201 religious brothers, of whom 147 were Japanese and 54 foreign.

There were 7,193 baptisms during the year. Of that number, 3,692 were of adults while 3,501 were of children under age seven. This is a 1,476-person decrease compared with five years before. The summary says there were 5,414 catechumens.

First communicants numbered 4, 511, while 4,790 were confirmed.

Sunday Mass attendance averaged 119,988. Easter brought 205,804 to churches in the country and at Christmas 277,950 people attended Mass.

Marriages united 3,130 couple. Nine percent, 285, of those were marriages between two Catholics. The largest number, 1,465 couples, were marriages between a Catholic and a non-religious or non-Christian spouse. Next, at 1,252, were marriages conducted in churches between non-Catholics. The smallest number in the marriage statistics, at 128, was of marriages between a Catholic and a non-Catholic Christian. Overall, church weddings were less than half of the 6,393 couples united in 2001.

Number of registered Catholics by diocese:

Tokyo          95,362
Nagasaki     65,415
Osaka         55,441
Fukuoka      31,074
Yokohama   54,430
Nagoya       26,174
Hiroshima    21,475
Saitama      20,619
Kyoto          19,015
Sapporo      18,010
Sendai        11,154
Kagoshima   9,584
Niigata         7,586
Oita             6,253
Naha           5,880
Takamatsu   5,099
Last Updated ( Saturday, 28 July 2007 )