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Vatican: Muslims now outnumber Catholics: First time in history

Although Christianity remains the largest religion worldwide, the Vatican says that Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism in estimated numbers because of higher birthrates among Muslims.

The Vatican’s new 2008 yearbook of statistics, edited by Vittorio Formenti, puts Muslims at 19.2 percent of the world’s population and Catholics at 17.4 percent for 2006, the last year with available data.