The Croatian Bishops Conference (HBK) said on Friday that not even after a news conference by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics today is it clear how many Catholics there are in Croatia and that ambiguities about the question on religious affiliation has diverted attention from a drastic fall in the population.

“The HBK press office today received a large number of questions regarding today’s news conference held by the leading people of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics. Unfortunately, not even after that news conference is it clear how many Catholics there are in Croatia,” the HBK said.

Individual questions concerning religious affiliation seem to have been unclear and sketchy, which confused respondents. The sketchy questions have resulted in members of the Catholic Church ending up in several categories (Catholics, Christians, others…), said the HBK.

“The ambiguities and inconsistencies regarding religious affiliation have diverted attention from the census results which are the most important for the future of the Croatian society, and that is a drastic population decline (of around 10%), as well as data on the share of children under 14 (14%) and the share of people over 65 in the total population (22.5%),” the HBK said, stressing that it had been warning of those trends for decades.

“We therefore believe that those data should be discussed much more at all levels of our society so as to find appropriate and effective solutions to reverse those extremely negative trends,” the HBK said.