VATICAN CITY, September 9, 2020 (Religion News Service, excerpts): According to one priest, Martin Lasarte, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a “large reduction” in the realm of missionary work, aggravating an ongoing decline in the number of vocations and priests seeking to become missionaries. But while Catholicism may be waning in many Western countries, new communities are emerging in other parts of the world, especially in the Eastern Hemisphere.
“When it seems that the light is about to fade in some places, faith emerges once again somewhere else,” he said. Korea, India and Vietnam have witnessed a significant surge in the number of Catholic faithful, the missionary said.
It’s in Europe that Lasarte finds “the most preoccupying areas.” Once the home of missionary zeal and hot-blooded Catholics, the Old Continent has become residence to a tepid and secularized faith, with dwindling vocations and empty pews, said the missionary.
With more than 2 million cases of the coronavirus and almost 200,000 COVID-19 related deaths, Europe has been dealt a heavy blow by the pandemic — and so has its faith. Churches, confessionals and many sacraments were banned during the months of lockdown in many European countries.
Speaking to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich said the pandemic set the Catholic Church back a decade in terms of faithful numbers and religious culture. The archbishop of Luxembourg said that Catholics in his own country (Luxembourg) “will be reduced in number” once they find that “life is very comfortable” without having to go to church.
Like many priests coming to terms with the declining state of religion in the west, Lasarte finds comfort in the “few, but good” approach. Despite challenges from within and without, the missionary continues to have faith that even in reduced numbers “Catholics can be a significant minority.” “Christianity still has a future,” he said.