Annuario pontificio

Annuario Pontificio

Author	Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Secretary of State
Country	Vatican
Language	Italian
Genre	Annual publication, Reference
Publisher	Holy See
Publication date	December 2, 2014
Media type	Printed Book
ISBN
Preceded by	Annuario Pontificio 2015
Followed by	Annuario Pontificio 2016

The Annuario Pontificio (Italian for Pontifical Yearbook) is the annual directory of the Holy See. It lists all the popes to date and all officials of the Holy See's departments. It also gives complete lists, with contact information, of the cardinals and Catholic bishops throughout the world, the dioceses (with statistics about each), the departments of the Roman Curia, the Holy See's diplomatic missions abroad, the embassies accredited to the Holy See, the headquarters of religious institutes (again with statistics on each), certain academic institutions, and other similar information. The index includes, along with all the names in the body of the book, those of all priests who have been granted the title of "Monsignor". As the title suggests, the red-covered yearbook, compiled by the Central Statistics Office of the Church and published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, is mostly in Italian.

The 2015 edition has more than 2,400 pages and costs €78. According to the Pontifical Yearbook of 2010, the number of Catholics in the world increased from 1,147 million to 1,166 million between 2007 and 2008, a growth of 1.7 percent. By the Yearbook of 2016 it was 1,272,281,000 at the end of 2014.

A yearbook of the Catholic Church was published, with some interruptions, from 1716 to 1859 by the Cracas printing firm in Rome, under the title (in Italian) Information for the Year ... From 1851, a department of the Holy See began producing a different publication called (in Italian) Hierarchy of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church Worldwide and in Every Rite, with historical notes, which took the title Annuario Pontificio in 1860, but ceased publication in 1870. This was the first yearbook published by the Holy See itself, but its compilation was entrusted to the newspaper Giornale di Roma. The publishers "Fratelli Monaldi" (Monaldi Brothers) began in 1872 to produce their own yearbook entitled (in Italian) The Catholic Hierarchy and the Papal Household for the Year ... with an appendix of other information concerning the Holy See.