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The newly released Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2016 reports a 1.1 per cent increase in absolute Catholic numbers between 2015 and 2016. In 2015 there were 1,285 million baptised Catholics and in 2016 1,299 million. However the world population increased by 1.14 per cent (from 7.383 billion to 7.467 billion) meaning that as a proportion of world population the proportion of Catholics fell, from 17.73 per cent of the world’s population in 2015 to 17.67 per cent in 2016.