Pope’s visit highlights challenges for Spanish Church

For Pope Benedict XVI, a visit to Spain will seem like a carefree holiday after his recent tour of Britain. That trip to Scotland and England coincided with angry protests at the Vatican’s handling of child sex abuse cases, and calls for him to face legal action. The British secret service even thwarted a reported attempt on the pope’s life by Islamists.

No such hostility is expected when the pontiff touches down in Santiago de Compostela on November 6, for a two-day visit that will also take him to Barcelona. Spain has been relatively unaffected by the abuse scandals that have rocked other countries with large Catholic communities.

The visit will be “momentous,” the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Julián Barrio, told the Spanish media.  “We are losing the theological reference points of our Christian roots, and I think the pope will help us revitalize our faith.”

But despite the enthusiastic reception he is certain to receive during his visit (with the exception of some protests at what it will cost the Spanish taxpayer) there will still be plenty to occupy Benedict XVI’s mind, given the challenges facing the Church in Spain.

The country has undergone deep and accelerated social and political changes since Franco died in 1975, bringing to an end his “National-Catholic” regime. Seventy-five percent of Spaniards now describe themselves as Catholic, down from 84 percent in 1998, according to a study by Spain’s CIS. Less than 20 percent go to mass regularly.

“In Spain we have more and more people who don’t agree with the teachings of the Church,” Juan Rubio, editor of Vida Nueva, a weekly Catholic publication, told Qorreo. “There has been a drop in religious practice in Spain; not so much baptisms and other ceremonies, but in regular church-going. The churches are emptier than they were.” Last year, he points out, for the first time ever there were more civil wedding ceremonies than religious ones.

This mirrors the acute social changes Spain has seen over the last six years under the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who has introduced reforms easing divorce, allowing abortion on demand and giving gay couples the right to marry and adopt children. Spain’s social reforms and their possible spread to other countries are one reason why the pontiff is so interested in –and worried about– the country. He visited Valencia in 2006 and will travel to Madrid in August 2011, for World Youth Day, giving Spain the kind of papal presence most other Catholic countries can only dream of.

But while Benedict XVI follows Spain’s political developments with a concerned eye, the agenda of Zapatero’s centre-left administration has clashed –at times fiercely– with the country’s own Catholic hierarchy. The head of the Spanish Church and archbishop of Madrid, Antonio María Rouco, has been a vocal critic of the prime minister. In one typical speech he accused the Socialists of allowing “the elimination of half a million children” through the abortion reform.

Rouco and many of his bishops have taken part in massive protest marches against some of these reforms and the quasi-political status of these senior Church figures has at times alarmed even the pope, who has sought to rein in their activism.

Spain is also of particular interest to the Vatican due to the enormous number of immigrants it received during the decade-long boom that ended with the current economic crisis. Nearly six million foreigners are registered in Spain, and hundreds of thousands more have illegal status. Many immigrants are young people from South American countries such as Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia.

“For the Vatican, Spain is the bridge to Latin America. The pope sees this country as a kind of laboratory, where he can see how things might develop across the Atlantic,” explains Rubio.

Letting down the Latin American congregation

And yet, many believe the Church has failed to rise to the challenge of this influx of migrants from Catholic countries. For Carmen Pérez, an Ecuadorian nanny who lives in Madrid, the Spanish Church has let her down. “In Ecuador the churches are full of young people at mass, but here it’s mainly old folks that go,” she says. “I don’t feel that the Catholic Church has opened its arms to me in Spain.”

In addition, with many other immigrants coming from countries with Orthodox traditions such as Romania and Bulgaria, and Muslim nations such as Morocco, the Catholic identity that the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela referred to is inevitably being diluted.

And yet, despite the problem of churches struggling to fill their pews, and with pensioners dominating the thinning congregations, there are young Spaniards who are boldly brandishing their Catholicism.

The movement Orgullosos de ser Católicos (Proud to be Catholic), from Santa Teresa church in Toledo, is one example. Its members are mainly teenagers who wear “Proud to be Catholic” t-shirts and they have even received the Vatican’s approval.

“There’s a perception among Spaniards that being Catholic is old-fashioned and has nothing to do with the modern day,” Gustavo Conde, a priest who is involved in the group, told Qorreo. “The media, for example, seems to make fun of the Church a lot and that’s despite the fact that so many Spaniards are Catholics.”

As well as being regular church-goers, his charges keenly observe traditional rituals and ceremonies, such as the dramatic Easter Week processions that are staged in many cities, particularly in the south.

“The idea behind this movement is that you should have no worries about saying that you are happy to be Catholic,” Conde says.

More established, albeit non-mainstream, Catholic groups, such as the conservative Opus Dei and Legions of Christ, are also seeing many young people join their ranks.

Reasons to be cheerful?

The Vatican can also look at Spain with optimism for other reasons. Spanish authorities worked closely with the Vatican in negotiating the release of Cuban dissidents earlier this year, showing cooperation with the Socialists was possible despite their differences. Moreover, the Zapatero administration appears to be heading for defeat in the 2012 general elections, to be replaced by the more Church-friendly conservative Popular Party.

But when Benedict XVI arrives, he will be visiting a nation of contradictions: Spain has a deep Catholic heritage and yet it has embraced modern-day consumerism and values with the zeal of a convert.

The itinerary of the pope’s visit will highlight this paradox. Santiago is a deeply traditional place whose enormous, Romanesque cathedral has been the destination for pilgrims from around the world since the ninth century. Barcelona, meanwhile, is known as Spain’s most contemporary and cosmopolitan city. Its Sagrada Familia temple, which the pope will consecrate during his visit, is a modernist marvel, designed by Antoni Gaudí, but which famously remains unfinished.

And while the pope’s visit is a major boost for Spain’s Catholic Church, much work also remains for it in the face of the challenges of the 21^st century.