The Catholic Church took its first steps on the African continent around the first century when the Patriarchate of Alexandria was formed as one of the four official Patriarchates of the East; including Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem.
It currently comprises 135,600,000 members of the 809,105,000 residents in Africa, so that about 16.5% of the total population declares themselves Catholic. As a result, Africa ranks third in number of Catholic population in the world, behind Latin America and Europe, respectively.
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