[Glorious, but empty, churches]
From Tortona to Milan, dioceses are grappling with contemporary challenges. Between inventiveness and realism, Ratzinger's prophecy is halfway through
Tortona also yields. Reorganization is the buzzword that from the hallways of the chancery crossed the threshold and quickly spread among the parishes: 313, most in Oltrepo, the others in the Tortona, Piacenza and Genoa areas, four different regions involved. Reorganization, they say, which means getting rid of the superfluous, of everything that is not essential, because the numbers do not add up and you trudge on. People are giving up, starting with the management of residences for the elderly and daycare centers, and sacrificing smaller and less attended churches. There is a shortage of priests and a shortage of worshippers. “This is certainly nothing new, and in the valleys then it is a disaster, and Covid has only accelerated a process that was already under way,” explains the pro vicar general of the Diocese of Tortona, Fr. Francesco Larocca. And so here is the reality: so many churches, chapels, parishes, oratories scattered over a vast territory and only one priest forced to go from one village to another. How can it be done?
It is ordinary worship that teeters, that no longer stands because objectively there is a lack of strength, a lack of time because you have to rush to say mass on the other side of the diocese in front of a handful of worshippers. One reorganizes, that is, one limits, reduces, closes down. One aims for the essentials. “You wants to avert the image of the parish priest-machine, an official who has to give up the human relationship disqualified by time running out. We want to focus on the essentials, proclaiming the Gospel and pastoral life.”
You are somewhat forced to play defense in this Italy of empty and desolate churches. It is Ratzinger's well-known prophecy unfolding: a minority Catholic Church, downsized, forced “to start again from the origins.” He had explained this on Christmas Day, the last lecture of a radio series. It was 1969 and the world seemed to be capsizing with its legs in the air. A year earlier, the student protests had begun, young people no longer recognized themselves in the values of their fathers, and the echoes of the disputes over the Second Vatican Council showed no signs of abating. “From today's crisis,” he affirmed, "a Church will emerge that will have lost much. It will become small and will no longer be able to inhabit the buildings it built in times of prosperity.” At the time, it seemed a distant reality; today the process is there for all to see. In the Netherlands they have long since put cathedrals up for sale, in France - it is speculated - by 2030, five thousand churches are in danger of disappearing. The reasons are different and of varying importance; secularization on the one hand, and also deteriorating buildings. (By now, allocating funds to renovate a church brings fewer and fewer votes). The results on the state of religious heritage is not only alarming, but shows the extent to which Catholic places of worship, ubiquitous on the groung, are in danger of disappearing within a short time. This is not just a matter of worship, but of culture, of common roots that have to do with history and memory.
In Italy, Tortona is certainly not an isolated case. “It is a process that was already going on with the previous bishop, Msgr. Vittorio Viola,” Fr. Paolo explains. The plan of reorganization starts way back, with aggregations of parishes called to work together promoted as early as 2015. “A period of experimentation to which today a further piece is added: the merger or incorporation of parishes that due to a shortage of forces no longer justify their individuality. We are not pleased, of course, to have to do this, but we must meet the future constructively, create new ways. It is clear that certain realities cannot stand, and closing some parishes that until fifteen years ago were at full capacity is inevitable. Today we need to polarize, create a network of lay responsibility that is increasingly strong and supportive, make targeted proposals, focus on youth ministry.”
A new geography made up of new boundaries is being redrawn, in an Italy of churches that first empty and then close. Man will experience “indescribable loneliness,” Ratzinger warned, and “having lost sight of God, he will ”feel the horror of poverty.”
The structural crisis is also felt outside the circle of diocesan priests. “Of the 43 Augustinian convents of the 1990s, today there are 20 left. There were 230 of us in 1996. Today there are 106 of us left,” explains Father Francesco Giuliani, pastor of the Shrine of Santa Rita in Milan. “We also have the dilemma in our order: put one in each convent and thus give minimal service or rather to come together and close places? I believe that more than organization we should have the courage to call the process by its own name: reduction. And it is better to look straight into the face of reality, without shame, without unnecessary guilt.” The patterns of the past no longer hold, just as the traditionalism of the past provided a structure that no longer has the numbers to sustain it, despite the consternation of the faithful who have remained frightened by the changes. “We in the diocese of Tortona,” Fr. Paolo continues, ”like others before us, have raised the issue of giving proper dignity to the liturgies. With few faithful maintaining the high standard is difficult, there is a shortage of volunteers at the reading during the celebration, catechists for the children, not to mention the choir that would be an important element of the liturgy and is now a mirage.” Father Giuliani also agrees: “Because of the reduction in staffing not all churches are able to hear confessions; rather, it is necessary to join forces. Just as Ratzinger said, according to whom Christianity will be communities that are no longer large, but small, with an almost family-like flavor, in which people will participate not so much out of duty as is perhaps done today in some cases, but out of true conviction. And we will have gained in quality.”
It still comes back to him, to the young Bavarian theologian on the run from Tübingen, a refugee in the quieter Regensburg from which he looked out to interpret the future. It was from there that he assured the radio microphone, “It will be a long process, but when all the travail is over, great power will emerge from a more spiritual and simplified Church.” The process seems to be only halfway through.
