Cardinal Stats and Charts, Summer 2022

This posts assumes that there are no deaths among the current Cardinals.

As of today (27 Aug 2022, there are be 226 Living Cardinals with 132 eligible to vote in a conclave when that should become necessary.

The average age of the Cardinals is 78.2 and the average of the electors is 72.3 years old.

The average length of service as a Cardinal is 11.2 years, 8.0 years if only considering electors.

The youngest three Cardinals are (all from the group created today):

• Giorgio Marengo, I.M.C., 48.20, Prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
• Virgilio do Carmo da Silva, S.D.B., 54.73, Archbishop of Díli, Timor-Leste.
• Paulo Cezar Costa, 55.08, Archbishop of Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil.

The oldest Cardinal is Alexandre do Nascimento (Archbishop Emeritus of Luanda, Angola) who is 97.5.

I've posted an updated version of the Cardinal Charts (warning: PDF format).

The charts are:

• Number of Cardinals (1585-2032; 1915-2032; and 1965-2032)
• Average Age (1585-2032; 1915-2032; and 1965-2032)
  

Cardinals Turning 80

When	Cardinal Electors
Now	132
End of 2022	126
End of 2023	115
End of 2024	102
End of 2025	89
End of 2026	84

(the table assumes no deaths nor new Cardinal Electors)

Cardinal-Electors as Percent of the College

With the introduction of the age limit for Cardinals to vote in a conclave, the percent of Cardinals eligible to vote had been trending downward. However, it has rebounded a bit in the recent times with the deaths of a number of the elderly Cardinals and a significant number of new creations.

Today, 58.4% are Electors. At the lowest point, it was 51.7% (before the November 2016 Consistory).

Assuming no Cardinal deaths and no new creations, on 30 Jan 2024, Cardinal-Electors will be 50% (113 of 226). A fortnight later it will fall below 50% for the first time ever (112 of 226).

Given that deaths of non-Electors are more likely, the dates will likely be later than those given above.

Age Limit and 120 Limit on Voting Cardinals

There is a technical limit of 120 voting Cardinals, but it has frequently been exceeded and by every Pope since it was established.

Currently there are 132 voting Cardinals. Assuming no deaths and no new Cardinals creations, the number will back to 120 voting Cardinals on 18 Sep 2023.

(See this link for more information on this topic)

Cardinal Electors and Modern Limits, updated October 2024

First a bit of background information before we get to the periods were there was more than 120 Cardinal Electors.

The age limit on electors became effective on 1 Jan 1971 (Ingravescentem Aetatem). The limit of 120 electors was added on 1 Oct 1975 (Romano Pontifici Eligendo). The current rule (cardinals age 80 or less on the day the Holy See becomes vacant may vote) was added on 22 Feb 1996 (Universi Dominici Gregis).

Before the 1996 language, it is not possible to precisely say the number of cardinal electors (it was based on when the conclave began), so I'll disregard the 2 times before then when the number could have been 121 for short periods. (See the 2nd table)

Since then, there have been 14 times when the 120 number was exceeded.

Start	End	Highest	Days	Pope	Note
21-Feb-2001	1-Aug-2002	136	526	JP2
21-Oct-2003	12-Dec-2004	134	418	JP2	1
21-Oct-2003	10-Jan-2005	135	447	JP2	2
24-Mar-2006	25-Mar-2006	121	1	B16
20-Nov-2010	27-Jan-2011	121	68	B16
18-Feb-2012	27-Jul-2012	125	160	B16
22-Feb-2014	12-Mar-2014	122	18	F
14-Feb-2015	20-Apr-2015	125	65	F
19-Nov-2016	29-Nov-2016	121	10	F
28-Jun-2017	6-Sep-2017	121	70	F
28-Jun-2018	28-Apr-2019	125	304	F
05-Oct-2019	30-Sep-2020	128	361	F
28-Nov-2020	08-Nov-2021	128	345	F
27-Aug-2022	31-Jul-2023	132	338	F
30-Sep-2023	23-May-2026	141	966	F	3

There are two entries beginning in 2003 due to Cardinal Gulbinowicz. At the time it was thought that his birth year was 1928 (age out in 2008), but in reality it was 1923 (age out in 2003 just before the consistory). The correct birth year was not acknowledged until February 2005.

1) in reality
2) as perceived at the time
3) the final period is an estimate that assumes no cardinal elector dies and no new ones beyond what have been announced are created before the end date.

For completeness, here are the other times when the 120 limit was exceeded with some notes.

Start	End	Highest	Days	Pope	Note
28-Apr-1968	1-Jan-1971	134	978	P6	1
30-Jun-1979	1-Jul-1979	121	1	JP2	2
28-Jun-1988	27-Jul-1988	121	29	JP2	2

1) This was before the age limit and the 120 cardinal elector limit existed.
2) The count and Days are based on the current language. At the time the age limit was more vague and a precise count of electors is not possible.

(Revised on 27 Aug 2018 to add info about Cardinal Gulbinowicz) 

(Updated on 27 Aug 2022 to add three new periods over the limit)

(Updated on 11 Jul 2023 to reflect recent Cardinal deaths and Cardinal-Designates)

(Updated on 7 Oct 2024 to reflect recent Cardinal deaths, Cardinal-Designates, and clarified Cardinal birthdates)

Happy Anniversary!

The earliest start to the main website was early in 1997. I don't have an exact date or even copies of the earliest beginnings. At the time, it was 3 manually created pages - covering only the US.

About 5 years later, on 10 May 2002, the Feast of St. Damien de Veuster, the new domain (Catholic-Hierarchy.org) went live. Statistics are only available from that point. (The site while much smaller, was substantially the same database driven site as today.)

There are a few points in time when the stats went down for a period of time (server overloads, etc.) - no attempt has been made to correct for those. In addition, since May 2020, Cloudflare has been used to help with serving the site's content and any pages served by them are not counted.

By the time the new domain went live, the site covered just the Americas. But that was corrected a few months later when the rest of the world was complete enough to merge into the main site.

China continues to be a unique situation. While all known bishops are listed, much of the information is limited. Also the names/boundaries of jurisdictions has not been resolved (at least in public). I hope that will be resolved soon.

So, in 20 years, folks have made more than 47.5 million visits to the site, viewing over 340 million pages. For the geeks: that's 753 million hits and 4.0 terabytes of data served.

Unique visitors are always a tricky metric, but currently its over 140k a month. In the last month, there have been visitors from almost every country in the world (Google Analytics says 220).

Thank you all for the support and help along the way. I look forward to many more years!

Religious Orders in Recent Times (top dozen, charts, 2022)

I've updated a few charts that look at the number of priests and members of religious orders over the last several decades. To avoid it looking like spaghetti, I only used the top dozen orders based on number of priests*. I also split the top 4 from the other 8 - there is very little overlap between the two sets and it makes the charts much clearer.

The charts are posted here. (.pdf format)

The Jesuits were the first order (of the top dozen) to have lost more than half of their members from their recent high point (from 36,038 in 1966 to 17,908 in 2011). They are currently at 14,839 members, down 59% from the all time high.

One might note that there is no significant change (positive or negative) since Pope Francis (a Jesuit) became Pope. In fairness, it normally takes several years for any event in a religious order (or diocese) to have an impact on the vocation numbers. In the case of the Jesuits, they also have a much longer process than most.

Two more orders reached that milestone in 2016: Franciscans (now down 54%) and Oblates of Mary Immaculate (now down 53%).

Two more orders are very close to reaching that point: Redemptorists (down 49%) and Vincentians/Lazarists (down just under 50%). Both showed a small drop in the last year.

In terms of priests, only two orders have reached that point, the Benedictines which are down 53% from their recent high point (from 7,058 in the early 1970s to 3,420 in 2019) and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate which reached it in 2021 (from 5,441 in 1967 to 2,643 now) down 51%).

Two other orders are in danger of reaching that point: Jesuits (down 49%) and the Franciscans (down 49%).

In the top dozen, only one order, Divine Word Missionaries, has hit its high mark in terms of members in recent years (6,131 in 2009).

In terms of priests, two orders hit their highest mark in 2016: Divine Word Missionaries with 4,231 and Discalced Carmelites with 2,937.

The Capuchins had the best year of the top 12, increasing their number of members by 6.

Overall, adding all of the top 12 together, the all time high was in 1966 with 160,926 total members. In 2021, that had dropped 44% to 89,835. In terms of priests, the high was in 1971 with 95,411 total priests. In 2021, that had dropped 35% to 61,940.

If current trends continue, the Jesuits will lose the title of largest religious order to the Salesians of Saint John Bosco. First by the number of members (9 years) and later by number of priests (15 years).

(* Out of curiosity I checked the top dozen orders based on number of members - it was the same dozen, but in a slightly different order.)

Note that only Male Religious Orders were included because that happens to be the data I have readily available. As time permits, I hope to do similar charts for Female Religious Orders. A few have already been added to the main website.

Cardinal Stats and Charts, 2022

This posts assumes that there are no deaths among the current Cardinals.

As of today (6 Mar 2022, there are be 212 Living Cardinals with 119 eligible to vote in a conclave when that should become necessary.

The average age of the Cardinals is 79.0 and the average of the electors is 73.0 years old.

The average length of service as a Cardinal is 12.1 years, 8.8 years if only considering electors.

The youngest Cardinal is Dieudonné Nzapalainga, C.S.Sp. (Archbishop of Bangui) who is about to turn 55 (on 14 Mar).

The oldest Cardinal is Jozef Tomko (President Emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses) who is about to turn 98 (on 11 Mar).

I've posted an updated version of the Cardinal Charts (warning: PDF format).

The charts are:

• Number of Cardinals (1585-2032; 1915-2032; and 1965-2032)
• Average Age (1585-2032; 1915-2032; and 1965-2032)
  

Cardinals Turning 80

When	Cardinal Electors
Now	119
End of 2022	110
End of 2023	99
End of 2024	86
End of 2025	74

(the table assumes no deaths nor new Cardinal Electors)

Cardinal-Electors as Percent of the College

With the introduction of the age limit for Cardinals to vote in a conclave, the percent of Cardinals eligible to vote had been trending downward. However, it has rebounded a bit in the recent times with the deaths of a number of the elderly Cardinals and a significant number of new creations.

Today, 56.1% are Electors. At the lowest point, it was 51.7% (before the November 2016 Consistory).

Assuming no Cardinal deaths and no new creations, on 3 Jun 2023, Cardinal-Electors will be 50% (106 of 212). The following month it will fall below 50% for the first time ever (105 of 212).

Given that deaths of non-Electors are more likely, the dates will likely be later than those given above.

New Cardinals?

Pope Francis has created new Cardinals every year of his papacy except the first (2013) and last year (2021). I strongly suspect there will be a consistory to create cardinals around 28 Jun 2022 (or perhaps later in the Fall).

Record number of Bishop Deaths - 2021

For a variety of reasons, including Covid-19, the number of bishops that have died this past year is at a record high.

The previous record was the prior year (2020) with 179 deaths (note that 4 of those were never bishops: a former Abbot; an Abbot Emeritus; and two Prefect Apostolic Emeritus).

The previous record was in 2017 with 169 deaths (note that 4 of those were never bishops: a former Abbot; an Abbot Emeritus; and two Prefect Apostolic Emeritus).

The next closest was last year (2019) with 164 deaths (note that 2 of those were never bishops: an Abbot Emeritus and a Prefect Apostolic Emeritus)

For 2021, the count is 191 (note that 3 of those were not bishops: a Prefect Apostolic Emeritus, an Apostolic Administrator, and a Prior General Emeritus plus an underground bishop).

Recent Necrologies

• 2016 - 155
• 2017 - 169
• 2018 - 160
• 2019 - 164
• 2020 - 179
• 2021 - 191

May they all rest in peace.

Now over 50,000 Bishops!

Once again, I've been working on some older data entry for the site. In doing so, it has passed a milestone: it now has data on over 50,000 Bishops. The recent additions include many bishops from the 14th and 15th centuries. Note that the source is pretty much exhausted for now, so there won't be a lot of new additions until new sources are found.

Here is a quick table showing how the data has expanded over time:

Year	Month	Bishops	Months from previous
2002	Jun	5,000
2002	Nov	10,000	5
2003	Oct	15,000	11
2006	Sep	20,000	35
2009	Jan	25,000	28
2011	Feb	30,000	25
2014	Jan	35,000	35
2018	Aug	40,000	55
2021	Mar	45,000	31
2022	Jan	50,000	10

(Note: there are a few "bishops" on the site that are not really bishops. These are mostly either ordinaries of a jurisdiction such as a prefecture or cardinals that were not also bishops.)

Second Vatican Council - Living Council Fathers (updated)

Last year, five of the Council Fathers of the Second Vatican Council have passed away. One more died this year (2023) - leaving only 5 still living. Recently Died:

1. Bishop Eloy Tato Losada, I.E.M.E., Bishop Emeritus of Magangué, Colombia, died 18 Jan 2022 (all 4 sessions)
2. Bishop Remi Joseph De Roo, Bishop Emeritus of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, died 1 Feb 2022 (all 4 sessions), last Council Father that had attended all 4 sessions of the Council
3. Bishop Gérard-Joseph Deschamps, S.M.M., Bishop Emeritus of Bereina, Papua New Guinea, died 25 Feb 2022 (sessions 2 and 4)
   
4. Archbishop Gabino Díaz Merchán, Archbishop Emeritus of Oviedo, Spain, died 14 Jun 2022 (session 4)
5. Bishop Laurent Noël, Bishop Emeritus of Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada, died on 2 Jul 2022 (sessions 2, 3, and 4)
6. Bishop Luigi Bettazzi, Bishop Emeritus of Ivrea, Italy, died on 16 Jul 1923 (sessions 2, 3, and 4)

Still Living: (by age)

1. Bishop José de Jesús Sahagún de la Parra, Bishop Emeritus of Ciudad Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, México, born 1 Jan 1922 (sessions 1, 2, and 4)
2. Bishop Daniel Alphonse Omer Verstraete, O.M.I., Bishop Emeritus of Klerksdorp, South Africa, born 31 Jul 1924 (session 4)
3. Archbishop Victorinus Youn Kong-hi, Archbishop Emeritus of Gwangju, Korea (South), born 8 Nov 1924 (sessions 2, 3, and 4)
4. Archbishop Alphonsus Mathias, Archbishop Emeritus of Bangalore, India, born 22 Jun 1928 (sessions 3 and 4)
5. Francis Cardinal Arinze, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, born 1 Nov 1932 (session 4)

Please pray for those still living along with all that have already passed for their many years of faithful service.

Full list of Council Fathers

Updated: 16 Jul 2023