New report breaks down Australian Catholic population

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has released a new report examining the Catholic community in the country, using data from the 2021 national census.

The document, released by the bishops’ National Centre for Pastoral Research, profiles a community which is shrinking and aging, but also becoming more culturally, linguistically, and ritually diverse.

The report puts the number of Catholics in Australia at 5,075,910, almost exactly 20% of the total population of 25,422,788. This is a decrease of around 2.5 percentage points in five years – in 2016, 22.6% of respondents identified as Catholic.