ROME
The Freethinker (UK)
Barry Duke, Editor
Dutch bishops visiting Rome this week have given Pope Francis grim tidings about the Church’s future in the Netherlands.
The bishops, according to this report, told the Pope in Rome that about two-thirds of all Roman Catholic churches in Holland would have to be shut or sold by 2025, and many parishes merged, because congregations and finances were:
In a long-term shrinking process.
Both Catholic and Protestant Christian ranks have shrunk dramatically across Europe in recent decades, and hundreds of churches have been sold off to be turned into apartments, shops, bars or warehouses.
In the Netherlands, churches have been closing at a rate of one or two a week.
Their five-yearly report blamed a “drastic secularisation” of society, although a critical group of Dutch lay Catholics said the scandal of sexual abuse of minors by priests, which has afflicted many Catholic dioceses around the world, had also driven many people away, as had the closures themselves.
The only bright spot for the Dutch church was the finding that the election of the popular Pope Francis in March appeared to have slowed the exodus this year.
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