The fate of our empty churches, the Pope announces that the sacred places, without believers, they must be reconverted for reception.
On the threshold of Natale the Church announces that it will close due to lack of priests and faithful. I had never heard something like that, and not by any ordinary people or by an irreverent priest but by the Vicar of Christ on earth, the Pope himself. Many churches, Bergoglio said, «necessary until a few years ago, now I'm not anymore, due to lack of faithful and clergy". The Church must adapt to changed times, Francesco continued, he must dismantle the churches and help the poor, since «the duty to protect and conserve the cultural heritage of the Church does not have absolute value, because in case of necessity they must serve the greater good of the human being and especially the service of the poor".

A historic announcement, moreover, during Christmas, but it went almost unnoticed. We are in the process of winding up the business? In the past we had heard the popes denounce the de-Christianization of society but no one had ever gone so far as to talk about churches without devotees and without priests to be repurposed as hospices for homeless people and migrants, or to be given away for the same philanthropic purpose. What a Christmas gift…
A religious heritage becomes real estate, the religion of faith becomes "the religion of humanity", the positivists and socialists would have rejoiced. A sacred and holy place that turns into a hostel is the mirror of a Church that becomes a humanitarian organization. Like any company, the Church with Pope Francis is changing its "social reason"? And we are here discussing the nativity scene, of the crucifix in public classrooms, or mosques. And the people applaud Matteo Salvini and the ministers Lorenzo Fontana and Marco Bussetti who raise the issue of the defense of Christian civilization and its millenary symbols, the cross, the nativity scene.
On purpose, the papal announcement wasn't enough but now there are also aggressive priests to cancel Christmas: the Genoese Don Paolo Farinella does not celebrate Christmas out of hatred for Salvini and the policy on migrants. And the Paduan priest Don Luca Favarin refuses to make the nativity scene because he is annoyed by the aforementioned nativity scene front of Diopatriaefamiglia. However, they are right about one thing: you cannot become Catholic only at Christmas, and go to mass and take selfies with the nativity scene.
The minister of culture of the Church, Cardinal Ravasi says that Catholics are now a minority in the West, in the Christian West, and not only in the world, there is now religious apathy and empty churches, if we don't want them to end up as pizzerias, at least become museums or places of debate. How to say, no longer places of worship but of culture; faith leaves the church as a legacy to the intellectuals. Enlightenment solution.
Meanwhile, around, deconsecrated churches become resorts, trattorias, theater, multifunctional places. Or worse, as was being done in Bergamo with the Capuchin church, they risk being bought by Islamists to make a mosque; a kind of religious nemesis, if we consider that many Christian churches were built on pre-Christian places of worship. Ah, if Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, who had time to die in 2017. the archbishop of Bologna asked – of which a posthumous book has now been published Writings on ethics, family and life (ed. Cantagalli) – «only the Church remained to make us feel the breath of eternity in human Love. And what if it too gave up on making him feel?».
The impression is that the Church has given up on it. But if the churches are abandoned due to lack of users and transformed into reception centres, "the breath of eternity" does not give in to the worries of the times? If the popes over the centuries had distributed money to the poor of their time instead of building altars, convents and cathedrals, today we would not have masterpieces of art or places of prayer in which birth is consecrated and entrusted, death, the wedding. In every church the travail of peoples and generations is reflected, the sacrifice and faith of those who built it, start, lived; there is the memory of the saints and martyrs, the sacred bond of a community, his soul, his story, his identity.
It is sad to see empty churches but a faith can be liquidated by changing its intended use, reducing it to pure social assistance? Perhaps the Church's vast real estate assets could be used to help the poor. Better to give up a building for profane uses rather than a church. And it is better for churches to celebrate Christmas and set up the nativity scene, rather than being reduced to venues for migrant assemblies.
A few years ago I was lucky enough to visit the parts of the Vatican not open to the public: in 200 meters I saw the highest concentration of masterpieces there is in the world: Michelangelo's Pauline Chapel, Bernini's rooms for receiving sovereigns, the loggias painted by Raphael's school, the first geographical map with America placed in the East, I even saw a tiny and magnificent bathroom of the Secretary of State painted by Raphael himself.
There is nowhere in the world such a density of grace and beauty in a space so intensely populated with art, adjacent to the Sistine Chapel: the human condition was described in those frescoes, the journey of souls and bodies between heaven and earth, light and darkness. The whole man was there, in his greatest greatness and in naked comparison with his mortal misery. If instead of all that beauty, the Church had helped the poor, starved some people, what he would leave to subsequent generations, what answers he would have given to life, to death, to hope?
Right, it is disheartening to see empty churches at Christmas. But even more disheartening is the announcement of the end-of-Christianity sales.
Marcello Veneziani
source – http://www.bdtorino.eu/sito/articolo.php?id=31423