31 October 2014

Percent of New Bishops from Religious Orders

Someone recently asked about the percent of new bishops that were from religious orders under the current Pope.

To simplify the statistics, I used the years from 2000 to 2014, ignoring the years that had a papal transition (2005 and 2013). The biggest problem is this leaves us with a small data set (1 almost complete year) for Pope Francis. A proper analysis will have to wait a few more years.

Here are the results, the percent of newly consecrated bishops from a religious order:
Pope Francis 29.7%
Pope Benedict XVI 24.9% (Low 19.2%, High 30.7%)
Pope John Paul II 25.0% (Low 20.2%, High 29.9%).

So it is true that the percent is higher for Pope Francis, but the annual variability of the percentages for the previous popes suggests it may not be significant. Both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II had years with a percentage higher than the year for Pope Francis.

PopeYear% Religious
F201429.7%
B16/F201322.0%
B16201221.0%
B16201119.7%
B16201025.2%
B16200929.4%
B16200819.2%
B16200730.7%
B16200628.2%
JP2/B16200526.5%
JP2200421.4%
JP2200320.2%
JP2200227.5%
JP2200125.9%
JP2200029.9%