World Youth Day – suddenly there’s belief in the future of the Church
‘WYD showed that the Church is alive, dynamic and for the young, and that there’s hope for the Church in Portugal.’
The enthusiasm, excitement and prayerfulness seen at World Youth Day surprised many observers and has changed the narrative about Catholicism’s appeal to young people in Europe and beyond.
When Manuel Clemente, the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon, presided over Mass on 1 August, he was doing more than opening World Youth Day 2023; it was also his farewell, the last major public Eucharist he would preside over before his resignation was accepted by Pope Francis nine days later. Clemente, patriarch since May 2013, turned 75 last month. After Francis arrived in Lisbon, he put the final touch to his send-off. The Pope and the Patriarch concelebrated the final WYD Mass in front of a crowd of 1.5 million enthusiastic young Catholics from all over the world.
This has been a year of sharp contrast for the Portuguese Church. In February, an independent commission concluded that their estimated figure of 5,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse over the past 70 years could be just the tip of the iceberg. The report, and a muddled response to it by some of the bishops, placed the Church in the spotlight facing severe criticism. This was followed by an outcry over the cost and alleged poor organisation of WYD, and there were reports of a shortage of volunteers and host families. In the end, despite some glitches, the event went ahead smoothly and the joy and enthusiasm in the streets won over everyone but the most ideologically-driven critics. “World Youth Day was a game-changer for Portugal.
We don’t know what the long-term consequences will be, but it marked a rupture with a series of ideas that people had of Catholicism. They saw joy in the youth, dispelling that idea of Catholicism as a dead religion. We could see it in street interviews, in the reaction of the shop owners who sold them their meals,” says Helena Vilaça, a sociologist of religion who has done extensive research into Catholicism and religious minorities in southern Europe. Fellow sociologist José Maria Pereira Coutinho says that “WYD showed that the Church is alive, dynamic and for the young. Above all, it shows that there is hope for the Church in Portugal, because young people from all over the country participated.” Whether WYD will make a difference in coming years is an open question.
Like much of Europe, Portugal is going through a period of rapid secularisation, and according to the French academic Charles Mercier, author of a history of World Youth Day, no previous host country has experienced a significant change of direction afterwards: “Statistically it has a short-term impact on beliefs and religious practice, but the middle and long-term impact is much less pronounced.” Even though Portugal’s closest neighbours in Europe are Spain and France, several factors have contributed to making its secularisation model less aggressive. Among Catholic countries in Europe, the Czech Republic, France, Belgium and Spain are moving towards secularism fastest, Pereira Coutinho explains, while Poland, Malta and Croatia lag behind. “Portugal sits in the middle.”
The difference between Portugal and Spain, in particular, is curious. Historically, even though Portugal has had periods of severe anticlericalism, there has been nothing as brutal as the executions of thousands of Catholic priests that took place in Spain during the civil war, and despite political similarities between the Iberian countries, both of which have been dominated by centre-left socialist parties for much of their recent history, in Portugal church-state relations are generally cordial. WYD was only allocated to Portugal once assurances had been given that the government was on board, and politicians were supportive of the organisers, even when plans seemed to be falling apart. Helena Vilaça says: “Portugal learned from the bad experience of the First Republic [1910-1926], which went very badly in terms of religious intolerance and persecution of the Catholic Church.
After the 1974 revolution that overthrew the right-wing dictatorship there were a number of factors that led to a different approach, including personal friendships between political and religious leaders, and that the state needed the Church because of its large network of charities.” Vilaça adds that “to have such close cooperation between the ruling party, despite being centre-left and extremely progressive in some fields, and the Catholic Church, and to also have many Catholics within its ranks ... would have been impossible in France, or even in Spain. Nobody erected any obstacles in the name of laïcité; there was solid cooperation.” Regarding the impact of WYD on the future of the Church, Vilaça – a member of the small Methodist community in Portugal – believes that it might offset the decline in religious practice caused by the pandemic.
“In some cases, such as with people who drew away during Covid, or Catholics who stopped practising, they will probably become more involved. Whether or not that will have a statistical effect I don’t know, but I do know that WYD projected a new image of Catholicism, and of Christianity in general.” How will the Church handle the burst of enthusiasm and energy that has been sparked by WYD? One priest admitted to me: “We’re all exhausted. Everything was great, and very intense, but there is a risk that things will just go back to business as usual.”
Maria Rocha e Mello, a 22-year-old university student, believes that part of the solution is to direct members of youth movements into less active parishes: “I was touched by the way many young volunteers were allocated to smaller, more gentrified parishes during WYD, and how they helped animate those parishes.” WYD has shown that there’s untapped potential for renewal of the Church in younger Catholics. Rocha e Mello is the coordinator of one of the largest Catholic youth initiatives in Portugal. Missão País, which is linked to the Schoenstatt movement, organises missions for university students during Easter holidays in remote communities.
The young missionaries go door-to-door inviting people to come to church for the Easter celebrations. The movement has become so influential over the past two decades that Pope Francis mentioned it by name twice in his speeches in Portugal. “What makes Missão País special,” Rocha e Mello says, “is that it is run by students for students. Every mission is accompanied by a priest, but the priests are there to help, they are not running the show. It is a beautiful experience of being Church, and of attracting young people back to the practice of the faith.”
At WYD many young people enjoyed what Émile Durkheim identified more than 100 years ago as “collective effervescence”, when people come together for a shared experience of positivity and euphoria. “Missão País wants to show the young people that with us they can repeat this feeling, time and time again in different situations,” says Rocha e Mello. On the same day that Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Manuel Clemente he nominated a new Patriarch, Rui Valério, the bishop of the Armed Forces. Valério has many challenges ahead, including continuing the work being done in Lisbon to deal with clerical sex abuse cases, but one of the biggest questions he faces is: how can the collective effervescence created by WYD lead to renewal in the Church?
The bishop is originally a Montfort Missionary, which is appropriate, considering that even though 80 per cent of Portuguese people identify as Catholic, in the capital the situation is very different. Vilaça says: “Lisbon is the most secularised area of the country, with only 54 per cent of people identifying as Catholic.” Seeing Lisbon as mission territory could be one of the keys to the success of Rui Valério’s ministry, but he faces more fundamental challenges. A priest serving in the diocese told me: “We need to rethink the parish system. Having one priest per parish is one thing, but nowadays you have one priest serving two, three or four parishes. There has to be a breaking point.
This will involve rethinking the role of the laity in serving parish needs.” Other priests I have spoken to agree that though Cardinal Manuel Clemente was a well-respected intellectual figure, with intuition for reading the signs of the times, he was less comfortable when it came to taking decisions. The arrival of a new bishop who is familiar with the Patriarchate – he served in a parish in Lisbon before being made bishop of the Armed Forces – but is not part of the diocesan clergy system might be an opportunity to address some difficult issues in the diocese. First, however, Patriarch Valério will have to pick his aides. Lisbon traditionally has three auxiliary bishops, but at present has only two. One has passed the age of retirement; the other is Américo Aguiar, the man who made WYD happen and who is to be elevated to the cardinalate at the next consistory, on 30 September, when he will become the second youngest member of the college of cardinals.
Aguiar is widely expected to be moved on from Lisbon to Rome, to take up a senior position in the Curia. Valério is aware of the need to put the energy and the ideals of the WYD experience into practice. In a message issued on the day of his appointment he told the faithful of Lisbon that “as the earth remains silent after tilling, so that the overflowing strength of the seeds may grow, this is also a time of silence for us, so that the seeds of life and hope that the World Youth Day poured into our hearts might germinate and bear abundant fruit of humility, holiness and a missionary service that dreams of reaching everyone.” The future of the Church in Portugal and throughout the world might depend on the seeds sown by World Youth Day not being allowed to fall on stony ground.
Filipe Avillez writes for The Tablet from Portugal.
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