There are a few ways to greet this news:

Mar 30th, 2008 | VATICAN CITY -- Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.

He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population — a stable percentage — while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.

"It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer," the monsignor said.

Formenti said that the data refer to 2006. The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.

When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said.

1. Note the Vatican's language of "no longer being on top" and being replaced in that position by Muslims. Now... get a third grade sense of humor and complete the trick by making up a funny missionary position joke. Smile, God loves you.

3. If we take that more accurate 33% figure for worldwide Christians (since, in the end, they all believe in Jesus, sabe?) and notice that Christians are taking over the world.

2. Undismayed would like to point out to the Holy See that though the Muslim Infidel Invader is indeed breeding much quicker than their Catholic counterparts, many more of those kids are blowing themselves up and therefore not sticking around long enough to reproduce. A truly accurate assessment of the Great Mohammed-Pope Baby Production Race 2008 would have to include that factor.