Pope visit to Spain hit by protests over 'ostentatious' trip
The Pope will be met by protests, marches and a "kiss-in" by gays and lesbians when he arrives in Spain on Thursday for a four-day visit to a festival expected to attract up to 1.5 million young Catholics.
By Nick Squires, Rome 10:00PM BST 17 Aug 2011
Benedict XVI will fly from Rome to Madrid but his attendance at the World Youth Day festival will be overshadowed by anger over the 50 million euro cost of the event – excluding security and policing.
Protesters said it was "scandalous" that Spain was being asked to foot the bill for such an "ostentatious" event when the country was mired in an economic crisis, with unemployment running at 45 per cent among people under the age of 25.
More than 100 groups opposed to the 84-year-old pontiff's visit took to the streets of Madrid last night (wed), including gay rights advocates, secularists, Catholic priests and members of the "indignados" movement against economic mismanagement and political corruption.
They united under the slogan "The Pope's visit – not with my taxes" and claimed the true cost of the celebrations could come to more than 100 million euros.
"We criticise this scandalous show at a time of such a terribly distressing economic situation, with entire families unemployed," said Evaristo Villar, of Redes Cristianos (Christian Networks).
"This ostentation is causing a lot of damage and distancing a lot of people."
A kiss-in by hundreds of gays and lesbians will be held to protest against the Roman Catholic Church's "moral condemnations of sexuality", according to one of the groups organising the event.
Benedict was confronted by a similar protest when he visited Barcelona in November.
On Tuesday police arrested a Mexican chemistry student suspected of planning a gas attack against the protesters. Police did not say whether the man, named as Jose Perez Bautista, had the capability to carry out an attack.
Investigators who searched his flat in a wealthy area of Madrid said he had tried to recruit people via the internet to help him in the plot.
The Pope will be welcomed today (thurs) in Madrid's Cebeles Square, where a huge white stage has been constructed, as he tours the city in his white "pope-mobile".
He will hold a prayer vigil on Saturday evening at an airbase southwest of the capital, before celebrating Mass on Sunday morning in front of a huge crowd.
Around 200 sail-shaped white confessionals have been opened in the city's Retiro Park, where priests will take confessions in 30 languages from pilgrims who have converged on Madrid from around the world.
The priests have been given special dispensation to welcome back into the Church women who admit to having had an abortion – a sin normally punishable by excommunication.
"This is to make it easier for the faithful who attend the World Youth Day celebrations to obtain the fruits of divine grace," the Madrid archdiocese said in a statement.
The Pope himself will sit in one of the booths on Saturday to hear confessions from three pilgrims.
Pope in Spain: Benedict XVI's drive to stop declining church attendance
The Pope's visit to Spain this week comes at a time of precipitous decline in the number of Catholics in Europe and North America.
By Nick Squires, Rome 10:00PM BST 17 Aug 2011
Even countries like Ireland and Italy, which have been staunchly Catholic for centuries, have seen sharp drops in the number of Catholics attending church.
The Roman Catholic Church's reputation has been badly hit by a string of paedophile priest scandals, as well as decades of creeping secularisation, in which the Vatican has dismayed many Catholics with its conservative views on issues such as women priests, gay marriage, artificial contraception and abortion.
In Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the prime minister, has clashed with the Church over abortion and changed the law to make it easier for women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
Around 80 per cent of Spaniards identify themselves as Catholics but two-thirds seldom or never attend church.
Less than 50 per cent of Irish go to Mass at least once a week, compared with 85 per cent two decades ago, with many Catholics left shocked and angry over the decades-long cover-up of sexually abusive priests.
In Italy, where more than 95 per cent of people describe themselves as Catholic, church attendance has fallen to less than 30 per cent.
Catholic churches and chapels in France are also increasingly empty and cathedrals are visited more by tourists than by the faithful.
Catholicism is also in decline in the United States, where 400,000 people left the Church in 2008 alone.
Even in Latin America, the Church has been hit by sex scandals in countries such as Brazil and Mexico.
The picture is much brighter in Africa and Asia, where Catholicism is on the rise. The number of Catholics in Africa tripled between 1980 and 2010, from 55 million to 150 million.
In Asia, church membership increased by 80 per cent in the same period. African and Asian countries now supply priests to Europe, in a reversal of centuries of missionary activity.
Benedict XVI has said that confronting the decline of Catholicism in Europe is one of the biggest priorities his papacy, but with the paedophile sex scandals of recent years it is not clear how the Church can re-establish its moral legitimacy and popular appeal.
There are an estimated 1.1 billion Roman Catholics in the world, compared with 1.5 billion Muslims and nearly 600 million Protestants.
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