The Holy Father arrives in Mexico today in his second trip to Latin America. Even secular outlets such as The Economist fail to speak of the elephant in the room when reporting news and facts that (at least for the Church) are terrible.
See if you can find the missing link:
The Pope will stay in Guanajuato, Mexico’s most devout state, where 94% of the population is Catholic. Well before his visit, posters went up to welcome the pontiff (though many depict his predecessor).
Yet outside the bunting-lined streets of Guanajuato, the Vatican’s grip is weakening. The share of Mexicans saying they are Catholic fell by five percentage points in the decade to 2010. In 1970 the figure was 96%. Many of these souls have been claimed by evangelical Christianity, from imported groups such as Baptists, to home-grown sects such as Luz del Mundo (Light of the World). In the south-east Catholics now make up less than two-thirds of the population.
Part of the decline is the result of a falling birth rate. In the 1960s, when Mexican women each bore nearly seven children, Catholicism had a steady stream of newborn recruits. Now that the average family has just over two children, the growth of Catholicism is slower. Evangelicals are proselytising as enthusiastically as ever.
Non-Catholic denominations are strongest in areas where neither the church nor the state has much presence. In Bejucal de Ocampo, a collection of ramshackle hamlets high in the Sierra Madre mountains of Chiapas, only 19% of residents are Catholic, making it the least-Catholic municipality in Mexico’s least-Catholic state. Most are Jehovah’s Witnesses or Baptists, whose colourful meeting places sit together on a hillside looking into Guatemala.
Something else happened to the Church in the 1960s, did it not? Or is it mentioned only in those news viewed as "positive"?
