From February 21 to 23, 2025, despite Pope Francis' hospitalization, Rome will host the Jubilee of Deacons. The ordained ministry of permanent deacons, revived after the Second Vatican Council, is open to married men and has existed since the early days of the Church.
Permanent deacons — an ancient ministry revived after Vatican II — are unevenly distributed throughout the Catholic world. They are especially common in the USA.
On this occasion, we take a look at the distribution of permanent deacons around the world.
The regions with most permanent deacons
The statistical report of the Fides agency, published in 2024, reported 50,159 permanent deacons worldwide at the end of 2022, and 407,730 priests.
While there has been an overall increase in diaconal ordinations (+988 permanent deacons between 2021 and 2022), the distribution of deacons worldwide is currently very uneven.
The country with the most permanent deacons in the world in 2020 is, far ahead of the others, is the United States, with 19,160 deacons. It is followed by Brazil, the country with the largest Catholic community in the world, which has 5,341 deacons.
Next come Italy (4,736 deacons) and France (2,910 deacons). Overall, the Americas (with 33,065 deacons) and Europe (15,705 deacons) are the areas with the most representatives of this ministry (Fides 2024 figures).
su familia, mujer y 3 hijos, le ayudaron a revestirse con la ropa de diácono
Many countries have no permanent deacons
Conversely, there are 75 countries in the world that have no permanent deacons. This is particularly the case in countries where the Catholic population is small or where the Church is a recent arrival.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the fifth largest Catholic country in the world, had no permanent deacons in 2020, despite a certain vocational dynamism.
As well, 29 other African countries are in the same situation. The only exceptions on the continent are three southern African countries with a strong Protestant tradition: South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. In 2022, the African continent had only 499 permanent deacons (Fides 2024 figures).
In Asia, there were only 354 permanent deacons in 2022 (Fides 2024 figures). There are 26 Asian countries with no deacons at all. However, with the exception of South Korea, these countries generally do not have a strong Catholic presence.
Deacons per capita
The country with the highest proportion of permanent deacons in relation to its Catholic population is the small island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which has 10 permanent deacons for every 7,000 Catholics: 1.42% of the country's Catholic population are therefore deacons. A high proportion of deacons is often found in some of the small Pacific and Caribbean islands.
With 25.82 deacons per 10,000 inhabitants, the United States — with the world's fourth largest Catholic population — is the country with the highest concentration of deacons, with the exception of the small island nations mentioned above.
Other countries with a high “deacon density” (more than 1 deacon per 1,000 Catholics) include several countries in Central and Northern Europe (Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Germany), as well as Iraq, Jordan, and Namibia.
More marginally, there are several Western countries such as Italy (8 deacons/10,000 Catholics), Switzerland (7.7), the Netherlands (7.2), Canada (7.2), New Zealand (6.9) and Belgium (6.8).
The Catholic Leader | Alan Edgecomb
More Catholics does not mean more permanent deacons
If we exclude the countries that do not have any permanent deacons at all, we can see that several “Catholic giants” have a very low number of permanent deacons (less than one deacon per million faithful). This is the case in many large African Catholic countries such as Nigeria and Tanzania (which have only one deacon each). It’s also true in the Philippines, the third largest Catholic country in the world, which has only 28 permanent deacons for more than 91 million faithful. In Poland, the Catholic Church also has very few deacons, with only 1 deacon per 100,000 faithful.
Finally, there is the question of the ratio of deacons to priests. Compared to priests, deacons are very much in the minority in Kenya and Tanzania, Indonesia, India, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire, as well as in Senegal and Poland.
Several major Catholic countries have a low proportion of permanent deacons compared to priests, notably Spain (one deacon for every 39 priests), Ireland (one for every 37), and Peru (one for every 32). Mexico, the second largest Catholic country in the world, has 14 priests for every deacon, and Italy has just under nine per deacon.
The most statistically “balanced” situation is found in Chile and the United States, where there are fewer than two priests for every deacon. In France, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, the Netherlands, Austria, and South Africa, there are fewer than five priests for every permanent deacon. In Belgium and Switzerland, this figure rises to over seven priests per deacon.
