CANADA
The Globe and Mail
ERIC REGULY
The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Feb. 16 2013
Italy is the country most closely associated with Catholicism. It is the home of the Vatican and, for two millennia, the heirs of the first pope, St. Peter.
It also has one of the lowest church attendance records in the 1.1-billion-strong Catholic world. Italian churches are becoming echo chambers, with pretty decorations, and Italy isn’t alone. Attendance is plummeting throughout Europe, along with the proportion of citizens who describe themselves as Catholic.
The church’s waning power will not come as a surprise to the Catholics and others who have been shocked by the sexual-abuse scandals and their cover-ups, last year’s “VatiLeaks” incident (when purloined documents alleged Vatican financial corruption), and the church’s unbending stances against gay marriage, contraception and women priests – the sense among many of the formerly faithful that the Vatican is centuries out of date.
So how what can the church do reverse the trend? What can restore the church’s popularity and relevance? These are questions that the College of Cardinals will no doubt consider when they weigh the pros and cons of the leading candidates (among them Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet) to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who will become the first pope to resign in six centuries when he leaves the Vatican on Feb. 28.
George Weigel, the American author of the best-selling biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope , says the church is “dying” in its European heartland. “In that way, Europe is similar to Quebec,” he says in Rome, where he is watching the papal transition. “The church withered away in both places in two generations.”
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