The number of Catholics in Croatia has grown by two per cent since 2001, to now include 89.99 per cent of the population, the Vatican statistics show.
According to data from the Central Statistics Office of the Church, there are 3,981,000 Catholics in Croatia, 83,668 more than the numbers of 2001 showed.
The Holy See gets the data from parochial records from the numbers of baptisms and deaths.
The Croatian theologian Adalbert Rebic says that there is no reason to doubt the statistics as they are precise.
Such an increase of two per cent is believable, especially taking into consideration an influx of Catholic families from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Vojvodina in Serbia, Rebic says. He adds that these are often families with many children.
Don Anton Suljic, a Catholic journalist and publisher, is not so certain.
"An increase of two per cent sounds arbitrary to me. Perhaps we should wait to see the results of the census."
A new census has just been taken in Croatia in the last month.
Vatican has registered an increase in the number of Catholics in the world this year.
In 2009 the number of baptised believers was 1 billion 181 million, or 15 million more than in 2008.
These results place Croatia at the top of the list of European states with the biggest number of Catholics togther with Vatican, Malta, San Marino, Spain, Italy and Poland.
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