Islam now world's largest religion

The Vatican confirmed Sunday that Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the
world's largest religion. The report in the Vatican newspaper is based on 2006 statistics, the latest available data.

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with L'Osservatore Romano.

Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.

He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 per cent of the world population, which he calls "a stable percentage" with Muslims nearly two points ahead at 19.2 per cent.

Formenti noted that one reason for the change is social and family values. "It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer," the monsignor said.

He said the figures on Muslims had been put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.

When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 per cent of the world population, Formenti said.

Hinduism, the world's oldest religions, is the third largest, with more than a billion followers accounting for 14 per cent.

And people classified as non-religious make up 16 per cent of the world's population.