Pope Warns of Erosion of Faith in Germany, Worldliness in the Church

According to its own statistics, the Catholic Church in Germany lost a greater number of faithful in 2014 than in any previous year in its recent history: 218,000 people, representing 39,000 more defections than the previous year.

Friday, during the German bishops’ ad limina visit with the Holy Father in Rome, the Pope highlighted the “erosion of the Catholic faith” in their country, adding that necessary reform starts in the confessional. “People approach the sacraments less often”. The sacrament of penance has nearly disappeared.

“Fewer and fewer Catholics receive the Sacrament of Confirmation or get married in church”, he added, “and the number of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life is severely diminished”.

In a nod to Pope Francis’s humble style, alongside the figures from the story of Jesus’s birth will be sculptures of ordinary people, including a man supporting an elderly person in need.

A group of Pope Francis’ episcopal appointees and other like-minded prelates provoked an open clash at the American Catholic bishops’ fall meeting in Baltimore this week as they pressed the conference to rewrite its election guide for 2016 to downplay the importance of the battle for life and family.

“On the day of their ordination, I always say to the new priests: ‘Do not forget where you came from; from the flock”.

“The church is alive”, the pope said. She has a face that is supple, a body that moves, grows, and experiences feeling: “she is the body of Jesus Christ”.

Two days before the UN-sponsored World Day for the Rights of the Child, sometimes called Universal Children’s Day, Pope Francis said: “It is everyone’s duty to protect children”, especially from abuse in all its forms, particularly the shackles of slavery and the brutality of forced military service.

“As every wise person would, we’re monitoring the situation, and at the moment, the plan is to go”, Lombardi told reporters. “At the same time, we support all humanitarian initiatives that aim at ensuring conditions in their countries of origin are more tolerable”.

The leaders of the temple had created a “St. Payola”, the pope said. “They surrounded themselves with tinted glass to avoid seeing out. They are hard to reach”.

But Christians are confident that God is at work and is reaching out to those people as well, the pope said.

“Despite what we know is happening, we felt very safe”, said Jean Mines, from Casa Grande, Arizona, who was visiting on a parish-organized pilgrimage.

Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, California, who like Bishop Stowe is a Francis appointee, said the document “does not take into account (the) fact that Pope Francis … radically transformed the prioritization of Catholic social teaching and its elements – not the truth of them, not the substance of them, but the priorities of them”.

In many instances, the relatively staid and rigid nature of established Christian churches, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, are of limited appeal to Africa’s overwhelmingly young church-going population, experts say.