In a recent report, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference used information from the 2021 national census to examine the Catholic community in the nation.

According to the report, there are 5,075,910 Catholics in Australia, which is 20% of the overall population. This indicates a 2.5 percentage point drop in five years.

President of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, shared that it is indeed disheartening to see these dropping numbers but also stated that it “was not a surprise” as there has been a “broad shift away from religious identification in Australian society”.

In addition, the Catholic community in Australia is getting older. In contrast to 33 years in 1996, the median age of Catholics today is 43 years. According to the report, 9.7% of Australian Catholics are self-sufficient and live alone, whereas 6.7% require support with daily chores.

The report also shed light on the growing number of Australian Catholics born in non-English speaking countries and who did not grow up speaking English. Italy, Vietnam, Philippines, Croatia (which was included with other former Yugoslavian countries) and India are the five nations that produce the most non-native English-speaking Catholics.

In Australia, Eastern Catholics have been recognized separately from Latin Catholics since 1996. This year, 77,393 (about 1.5% of the country's total Catholics) were reported as members of the Eastern Catholic Churches. There were 2,886 Ukrainians, 3,091 Melkites, 10,305 Syro-Malabars, 14,108 Chaldeans, and 47,003 Maronites among them.

However, the actual population of Australian Eastern Catholics is likely to be higher. According to the report, some undoubtedly checked the standard "Catholic" option on the census and were so registered as Latin. In this regard, it is noteworthy that slightly more than 3% of Australian Catholics reported speaking languages historically linked with the Eastern Churches at home: such as Ukrainian, Assyrian/Chaldean, Arabic, and Malayalam.