Twelve years of Francis’ pontificate have just been celebrated. The Vatican reports are always self-congratulatory.
It is very difficult to cover, in a single appraisal, the reality of the Church, which is vast and with differences between countries — but from a certain point it is possible to contemplate the surroundings; I can do it, then, from this corner of the far south that is Argentina, a nation that is (or was?) mostly Catholic. As the saying goes, “one button is example enough.”
The decadence of the Church is evident. The bishops live up in their own clouds. The seminaries are populated by young people whose number can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There is even one seminary, a hundred years old, in which in this 2025, not a single seminarian entered! Vocations are not showing up. The command of Christ (“make disciples of all nations – pánta ta éthne – to be my disciples”) has yet to be fulfilled. Where are the apostles? The people are bewildered; many of the faithful long for better times.
I think that two laments of Pope Paul VI are still valid: “We expected – after the Second Vatican Council – a flourishing springtime and a harsh winter came”; “through some crack the smoke of Satan has seeped into the temple of God.” The ecclesial presence in society is closely limited; journalists notice it, because they recognize, with a historical outlook, that, in our country, the Catholic Church has always been something official. We are considered a Catholic country. But baptisms do not exist; the birth rate in Argentina has plummeted: in 2023, with 460,902 births, the lowest figure of the last 50 years has been registered! And marriage no longer exists, now there are just “couples.” The public presence of the Church is non-existent; it only filters in the journalistic order only if it makes political judgments, especially against the government.
Continue reading at Rorate Caeli