 Since 1970, the number of Catholic priests in the world has decreased by only about 5,000, to 414,313 priests as of 2012. but the worldwide Catholic population has nearly doubled, growing from 653.6 million in 1970 to 1.229 billion in 2012.This has resulted in a worldwide shortage of Catholic priests.In 2014, 49,153 Catholic parishes had no resident priest pastor.