Tracking church growth, fertility, anthropology, history & cultural shifts — with a focus on conservative Christianity and Western culture. Ave Christus Rex
Joined December 2023
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🇺🇦 Rivne oblast Ukraine.
This region bordering Brest, Belarus, near Olshany is the largest regional concentration of "registered" (not be mistaken with the Unregistered) classical Pentecostals in Ukraine.
• Their own figures cite approx 32–34k adult members over recent years with 20k children and 10k youth.
• That puts the under 18 share at a very healthy level at anywhere from 35–45% and therefore a very young community who make up an increasing share of births in the Rivne Oblast.
Even with the emigration owing to a slight loss in adult members since 2023 fertility and the age structure remain high as they continue to open Churches and prayer halls across the region and throughout Ukraine.
(Source: Rivne Regional Association of the Ukrainian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith)
Source:
•2023 chve.rv.ua/istorychna-dovidk…
•2026 chve.org.ua/na-rivnenshchyni…
•2024 chve.rv.ua/2024/02/09/nova-s…
🇵🇱 And another new FSSPX Chapel in Poland emerges as of 18th of October, this time in the city of Krakow.
In the last 12 months:
🇵🇱 Poland- New/and or upgraded chapels:
• Kraków on October 18, a converted warehouse for 500 faithful.
• Rzeszów, August 15th
• Białystok (March 29th) after the previous one doubled in attendance
• Tarnów on Palm Sunday
• Częstochowa (March 15)
• Bydgoszcz on August first the SSPX moved to a larger site, due to growth
🇵🇹 Lisbon, Portugal: New Church blessed called Our Lady of Portugal church on June 10 (again due to growth)
🇭🇷 Zagreb, Croatia: new chapel opened on September 2025 (just outside the last 12 months)
🇦🇹 Salzburg, Austria: new church under construction
🇺🇸 multiple U.S. projects ongoing at present including in Charlotte NC, Florida etc
Nouvelle chapelle de la FSSPX bénie à Cracovie (Pologne) ce 18 octobre, en présence de 500 fidèles.
Depuis deux ans, la chapelle du prieuré de Libertów, près de Cracovie, accueillait un nombre croissant de fidèles et était devenue trop petite.
Un ancien entrepôt, situé plus près du centre-ville, a été transformé en lieu de culte grâce au travail de nombreux bénévoles, mobilisés pour réaliser les aménagements nécessaires.
L’abbé Karol Stehlin, supérieur du District de Pologne, a procédé à la bénédiction de cette nouvelle chapelle placée sous le patronage de saint Pie X, avant d’y célébrer une messe solennelle.
news.fsspx.pl/2026/10/polska…
James retweeted
Trouver une messe, les coordonnées d’une chapelle ou les horaires d’un prieuré devient plus simple. La Fraternité Saint-Pie X met en ligne un nouveau service mondial, conçu pour rassembler en un même endroit les informations utiles aux fidèles.
Accessible à l’adresse map.fsspx.org, cette carte interactive est appelée à remplacer celle actuellement proposée sur le site international.
La recherche peut s’effectuer directement par ville ou par lieu, mais aussi en parcourant le planisphère. Les implantations peuvent également être consultées par pays ou par district.
Chaque implantation dispose de sa propre fiche, avec, selon les données disponibles, les horaires des messes dominicales et de semaine, l’adresse, les coordonnées, le site internet ou encore le prieuré de rattachement.
Un accès direct à l’itinéraire facilite également les déplacements. La provenance des horaires et leur date de mise à jour sont indiquées, afin de connaître l’origine des renseignements affichés.
Les différents liens entre les maisons sont aussi visibles : depuis la fiche d’un prieuré, il est ainsi possible de retrouver les chapelles et lieux de culte qui en dépendent.
En cas d’erreur ou de changement, un système de signalement contribue à maintenir ces renseignements à jour.
Le service ne concerne pas seulement les églises, chapelles, prieurés et missions. Une rubrique est consacrée aux écoles liées à la Fraternité ou à des communautés amies.
Différents filtres facilitent leur recherche selon le pays, le niveau d’enseignement, le type d’établissement ou encore la présence d’un internat.
Disponible en français, anglais, allemand, espagnol et italien, map.fsspx.org rassemble ainsi dans une interface unique des renseignements jusqu’ici répartis entre différents sites.
Que ce soit à proximité de son domicile, pendant les vacances ou à l’occasion d’un déplacement, il devient ainsi plus facile de trouver un lieu de messe et d’en consulter immédiatement les informations pratiques. map.fsspx.org/fr
James retweeted
The Fraser script or Old Lisu script is an artificial abugida for the Lisu language invented around 1915 by Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen preacher from Myanmar, and improved by the missionary James O. Fraser
James retweeted
Laipianism is an indigenous, monotheistic religion founded in Myanmar's Chin State by the healer and visionary Pau Cin Hau (1859–1948), who also invented two sacred scripts. It once rivalled Christianity in Chin State, but now has only 5,000 adherents.
🇻🇦 The Neocatechumenal Way:
(TFR approx 3.5)
I decided to see what demographic material is available for the Neocatechumenal Way.
- Many have heard of Traditional Latin Mass Catholics and their fertility. Fewer have heard of the Neocatechumenal Way, a Catholic formation movement that operates within ordinary Novus Ordo parishes.
It was founded in Spain in the 60s. The general premise is to form people into small communities focused on various aspects of Catholic life like Scripture and liturgy.
- The movement places a strong emphasis on welcoming children and large families are a documented trend within the movement, although specific numbers and data are hard to parse.
- The Way is currently present in 139 countries, with more than 20k communities worldwide. The vast majority approx 16-17k are in Italy and Spain. In those countries it maintains its largest network of parishes and communities.
• Family size: What we can decipher....
• 📊 Barcelona, Spain: A 2012 parish report from Santa Joaquina de Vedruna recorded an average of 4.2 children per married couple across its Neocatechumenal communities. It reported over 700 adults and 400 children under 14.
- Approx 70% of the children had been born after their parents joined the Way,
- Additionally and quite interestingly the report also stated that almost 80% of children over 14 continued in the movement.
• 📊 1986: At an audience with Pope John Paul II, the Way reported 48 families with 203 children an average of over 4.2 children per family.
• 📊 1994: Another papal audience this time involved 120 missionary families with 441 children. So an average of about 3.7 children per family.
• 📊 2018: The movement reported 1,668 families serving in missions worldwide, with approximately 6k children.
• 📊 2022: The Ways own figures reported more than 2k missionary families with around 6,5k children and thus approximately 3.25 children per family.
- Additionally there is a large body of stories of individual families, some with enormous families that has been reported in local news in various countries. Particularly again in Italy and Spain
- Taken together, the reported missionary family figures suggest an average in the region of 3.5 children per family, although as a caveat this is a very rough estimate from the information available. This also does not allow for completed family size which may push the average slightly higher.
(Sources Below)
Sources:
• Barcelona parish report (2012): santajoaquinabcn.com/wp-cont…
• 1986 papal audience neocatechumenaleiter.org/en/…
• 1994 papal audience neocatechumenaleiter.org/en/…
• 2022 movement stats neocatechumenaleiter.org/en/…
James retweeted
Breaking the Dark Spell of the Longhouse:
Like the witch in C.S. Lewis’s Silver Chair, feminism has cast a dark spell over the West. Women are elevated everywhere to places of rule, but it has made everyone hysterical and miserable. In this episode, we discuss the ways in which female rule has turned America into a hellscape of HR bureaucracies and women in pantsuits. We’ll also discuss our new book, The Longhouse, and why it is so necessary at a time like this.
James retweeted
In case you missed it: there are 255 MORE Latin masses worldwide since Traditiones Custodes. The modernists have failed.
Never despair, never give up! Watch this:
"Ignorance is Strength" (1984)
A very interesting observation here by @DogoodAnon
Namely, whatever divides the majority of Churches in 2026, most seemingly agree on their shared belief that the inquisitive minds of young (especially White) Christian men must be stymied at all costs.
James retweeted
Belize census data shows Mennonite growth at 2.9%pa from 2010-2022, providing a rough estimated TFR of 4.5 for Mennonites VS 1.54 for non-Mennonites (1.66 overall). That puts a very rough estimate of Mennonite births at 10.8% of Belize births.
Belize 2025
Births: 6,009 (+3.57% YoY)
Deaths: 2,125 (-8.68% YoY)
2025 mid-year pop. 417,634
TFR 1.66
worth keeping in mind 4-5% of Belizeans are Mennonites, and likely form a growing % of the birth population, likely ~8% !!
sib.org.bz/dl/abstract-of-st…
🇧🇾 Additionally according to the document "Pentecostalism in Contemporary Belarus" by Author Tatiana Vladimirovna Shchuro, the Registered Pentecostals had 15k children in Sunday School from ages 5-14, in 2019.
•This in turn leaves an additional 8 years out (under 18), which is where the vast, vast majority of the remainder of the 23k non-members are to be found.
• If we therefore start at 2019 and track back 18 years to 2001, we arrive at a rough average of 1.3k births in the Denomination per year.
• If we therefore allow for a gradual increase in annual births, a 2025 estimate of 1.5k births in the Denomination again seems plausible.
*Again the below table is once again based on projections and estimations of a Belarus of approx 7.5 million in 2050 and no fertility rebound, and with a static fertility for Pentecostals going forward.
🇧🇾 Belarus may look significantly different by 2050. It is another country that could be significantly changed by high fertility amongst certain groups.
-Even a slight fertility advantage of 1.5-2 extra children per woman can have a major impact in 25 years when coupled with ultra low national TFR (1.01/1.1)
- In a previous post on Olshany I roughly estimated the registered Pentecostals of Belarus (ОЦХВЕ) (of which Olshany is a member) at approx 2.5% (1.5k) of all national births today given not only their documented consistent high fertility but also their large child ratios.
• For example using the 2012 (Sergei Podnyuk) figures we have for them we get 55k attendees, of which 32k baptized members.
• This leaves 23k non members or 42% of the people attending services who were not formal members.
• The author (Podnyuk) of the 2012 study himself states that this is mostly explained by not yet baptized children.
• By 2021 (Miazin, 2024)
total Adherents had increased to 60k.
-Mathematically speaking, for a group of about 60k people to produce 1,5k births a year (roughly 2.5–2.8% of Belarus’s current total), the group needs a current TFR of approximately 3.0–3.5, given the younger age structure already indicated by its high share of children.
We know this is certainly a plausibility given congregations like Olshany exist within the Denomination.
-If Belarus indeed does continue its current slide in both population and national births fall towards mid 30k by 2050, owing to no rebound.
It's fair then to assume that even if the registered group stays static in births they would represent roughly 5% of all births assuming they maintain their fertility advantage.
- Unregistered Pentecostals are whole different kettle of fish who have a vastly higher TFR of above 4 and would add significantly to this. Estimates from around 2012 (on their Russian Wikipedia page) are 18k believers in Belarus (9k members and 9k kids.
If the unregistered network is included Pentecostals alone (both registered and unregistered) would push the combined share of Belarusian births still higher again by 2050 at approx 7-8%.
*(Note: it is important that we stay within the bounds of what can be obsevrved from sources. With that said these are my own speculations and extrapolations, nothing about demographic outcomes can be predicted with any certainty other than the fact that those who breed, eventually usually end up in the lead)
(Sources
Sergei Podnyuk and the Theological Institute of ХВЕ, Nikolai Miazin, Russian Wikipedia, Belstat)
James retweeted
Belize 2025
Births: 6,009 (+3.57% YoY)
Deaths: 2,125 (-8.68% YoY)
2025 mid-year pop. 417,634
TFR 1.66
worth keeping in mind 4-5% of Belizeans are Mennonites, and likely form a growing % of the birth population, likely ~8% !!
sib.org.bz/dl/abstract-of-st…