LOS ANGELES (CNS) — A new study says California’s Catholic population is growing by more than 13 percent a year. By 2025, it says, Catholics will make up more than 36 percent of the state’s population — up from 30 percent in 2005.

The forecast is part of a 65-page demographic study conducted for the California Catholic Conference by Seattle-based church researcher Joseph Claude Harris. He said Latino Catholics are driving the state’s Catholic population increase, accounting for 80 percent of the church’s anticipated growth in California.

Overall, Catholics represent nearly 60 percent of California’s projected population growth in the next 20 years, the study said, adding that the growth presents mixed blessings for Catholic leaders. Along with the prospect of many more members comes the challenge of how the church can serve them, especially their sacramental needs.

The state’s priest population has been declining, only a handful of new parishes have been created over the past 15 years, and those trends are expected to continue. The study projected that by 2025 the average Catholic parish in California will serve more than 5,500 households, almost 50 percent more than in 2005.

“We are truly blessed that the Catholic Church in California is vibrant and growing, but our future should not happen by accident,” said Stockton Bishop Stephen E. Blaire, president of the California Catholic Conference. “As pastors responsible for the spiritual well-being of our Catholic people, studies like this will help us do what we need to do to better serve the needs of burgeoning Catholic communities throughout the state.”

In terms of sheer numbers, the study paints a picture of vibrant and dynamic growth for the Catholic Church in California:

• The state’s total Catholic population will grow by 5.6 million in the next 20 years — from 11.1 million in 2005 to 16.7 million in 2025. The increase includes 3.5 million from a natural increase — births in excess of deaths — and 2.1 million as a result of migration from other states and countries. California’s total population is expected to grow from 36.6 million people in 2005 to 45.9 million in 2025.

• By 2025, 4.3 million new Catholics will have been baptized in the state, more than 3.1 million children will have celebrated their first Communion, and the average parish will have expanded by over 1,800 families.

• A major factor driving the growth of the church in California is the increase in its Hispanic population, at least 60 percent of them Catholic by conservative estimates. The four dioceses in Southern California alone will contribute 25 percent of the projected national growth in Catholic Church membership over the next 20 years.

Hispanics currently form about 36 percent of California’s population, but that is expected to rise to 45 percent by 2025, Harris said.

He said Catholic parishes in the United States will add 17.4 million additional members over the next 20 years, but that growth will happen “unevenly,” with four out of five new Catholics living in the South and Southwest and in the Mountain and Pacific states, while dioceses in the Midwest, Middle Atlantic and Northeast experience slower growth or in some cases even a decline.

“This disproportionate growth will place extraordinary pressures on some dioceses in the region to open new parishes while the number of active diocesan priests continues to decline,” said Harris.

He said if the Catholic population of the San Bernardino Diocese in California continues to grow at the rate at which it has grown since 1990, in the next 20 years it will roughly double, from 1.2 million in 2005 to nearly 2.4 million in 2025.

The average parish there now has 12,000 members, or 4,600 households, and that will double by 2025 if no new parishes are formed, he said. The diocese “will need to open five new parishes a year over the next 20 years to merely maintain the present average parish size,” he said.

Harris said that from 1995 to 2004 the number of active diocesan priests in California dropped by 202, or an average of 22 a year. This pattern, which shows no signs of changing in the near future, will make it difficult for dioceses to form new parishes to accommodate their burgeoning membership, he said.

The entire study is available online at www.cacatholic.org.

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