The Philippines may have ranked third in the world with the most baptized Catholics, but it has topped the countries with most baptisms of young children, based on the latest Statistical Yearbook of the Church.

In a news post, the CBCP cited the report of Catholic News Service on April 10 disclosing the Asian country recorded more than 1.6 million baptisms of children below seven years old at the end of 2019.

This was followed by Mexico with more than 1.48 million; Brazil with more than 1.05 million; 595,286 in the US; and Colombia with 442,396.

The yearbook provides separate statistics for the baptism of people above seven years old.

Overall, the Philippines remained in the top five countries with the most people baptized Catholics.

The figures also showed Brazil had 177 million baptized Catholics in 2019; Mexico had 115.5 million; the Philippines had 89 million; the US had almost 74 million; and Italy had 57.8 million.

The Annuario Pontificio, which was released in March, contains figures valid as of Dec. 31, 2019 about every Vatican office, as well as every diocese and religious order in the world.

Worldwide, the number of Catholics has increased by 16 million in a year to 1.34 billion, holding steady at about 17.7 percent of the global population.

The growth was also spread across continents except Europe.

In 2019, 48.1 percent of the world’s Catholics were living in the Americas, followed by Europe with 21.2 percent, Africa with 18.7 percent , about 11 percent in Asia and 0.8 percent in Oceania.

The Philippines commemorated the 500th anniversary of the first Christian baptism in the Philippines on Wednesday.