POLAND
NBC News

By Donald Snyder, Special Correspondent, NBC News

Polish Catholics are hoping for a new pope with fresh vision.

In Poland, widely considered the most Catholic country in Europe, the church has been plagued by dwindling attendance, surging secularism and increasing alienation among young people.

“Well-educated young people from the cities are leaving the church,” said Marej Zajac, a writer for the Polish Roman Catholic weekly magazine Tygodnik Powszechny.

According to Poland’s Statistical Institute of the Catholic Church, weekly church attendance has dropped from 53 percent of the population in 1987 to less than 40 percent in 2011. It’s the lowest number ever recorded, said Bruce Porter-Szucs, a history professor at the University of Michigan who writes extensively about Poland.