Casoni it is a village of 2,500 souls in the province of Vicenza. And to tell where the Church is going in Veneto in the days of Pope Francis’ first visit, you can start from this little town that Pius the highest rate of religious people in the world. Leonardo Bortignon, passionate about local history, even took the trouble to count them: as many as 157 consecrated from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day, 71 priests, 5 non-priest religious men, 76 religious women, three secular consecrated women, as well as two seminarians who died before ordination. «But the situation has changed, and not only here…» opens his arms Don Alessandro Piccinelli, who since he arrived in the Vicenza area in 2016, has put him in charge of both the parish of Casoni and that of Mussolente: in fact, he found himself dealing alone with what two priests used to do. «The last celebration for one of our villagers who took vows dates back to six years ago. Then nothing more. The mass is well attended but if you look at those present they are largely elderly. The truth is that to be a practitioner nowadays, you need to have the courage to go against the grain.” The poor, peasant Veneto that crowded the masses and obeyed the priest right into the voting booth no longer exists, with the Venetian Catholic weekly La Voce di San Marco already drawing the line in 1948: «Catholic Action has the task of Christianizing the population and to the DC to satisfy their economic and political needs”. Today, of the sacristy of Italy, only the walls of the seven thousand churches built over the centuries and today desolately empty remain.
Priests, few and depressed
Veneto is divided into nine dioceses (in addition to the seven provinces, there are Chioggia and Vittorio Veneto) and 2,070 parishes, scattered mainly between Padua (455), Verona (378) and Vicenza (355). To Venice, seat of the Patriarchate, there are 125. An army of priests now halved to manage them is called upon: in the Seventies, diocesan and regular priests (i.e. those who belong to an order, such as Jesuits, Franciscans, etc.) numbered a total of six thousand, which dropped to 4,800 in 2004 until current 3,700. Venice, for example, went from 714 priests in 1969 to 266 in the latest census in 2022. And in the future it will be even worse: the only Church in Vicenza predicts that the current 380 diocesan priests will drop to 150 in fifteen years. For this reason too, there has been discussion for some time about opening up roles of greater commitment to women, but the truth is that it is probably too late to think that they will be the ones to compensate for the lack of vocations: in the Seventies there were 17 thousand religious women in the Veneto, now they are less than a third.
The result? Our priests are increasingly exhausted, stressed and depressed, forced to run from one parish to another and take care of all the tasks. Sometimes all that remains is to raise the white flag: in each diocese of the Triveneto, on average two or three priests a year ask to take a break and benefit from a sabbatical period.
Deserted masses and civil weddings
Broadening our gaze from parish priests to parishioners, we discover that it is a now largely secularized Christian community that welcomes Pope Francis. According to Istat, just 18.7 percent of the population attends a religious place at least once a week (just below the Italian average), and one in three never goes to mass. To be clear, we are less practicing than in the regions of Southern Italy (23 percent, with peaks of 24 in Calabria and Sicily) but also in the Marche (19.2) and Trentino (19.5). The data is reflected in those stages of life which were once considered fundamental for any Christian. According to the Regional Statistics Office, in 1984 the Venetian couples who chose not to marry in Church were just 11 percent but by 2004 they had jumped to 37.9 percent. The overtaking came in 2013, and now civil marriages exceed 66%. There is also an increase in those who choose not to get married at all, with the result that in twenty years we have gone from 19 thousand marriages a year to the current 14 thousand, and in one case in four these are second marriages.
The road also seems marked for women new generations: four out of ten newborns are the children of unmarried parents, even half if we look at couples under 29. According to some estimates, 30 percent of children are not baptized and, when they grow up, benefit from Catholic religious education they are eight out of ten Venetian students: a 10 percent decline in less than twenty years. And in high school, depending on the field of study, enrollment drops further to reach 68 percent.
A more “reasoned” Faith
In all this, the only data (apparently) going against the trend: on the one hand the Biblical Festival which, which started quietly in Vicenza in 2004, now involves seven Venetian dioceses and records 25 thousand presences; on the other, the five institutes of religious sciences in the Veneto which are experiencing a boom in enrollments (from 497 students in 2018 to the current 741, +49%). It is the sign that Faith is no longer a social imposition but becomes the fruit of reflections, and those who define themselves as Christians today want to “investigate” God, delving into its implications and his relationship with men. Consequently, due to merit and preparation, more and more Venetians are reaching leading roles in the field of the study of religion. Some examples: the theologian from Verona Alberto Dal Maso has been appointed director of the Queriniana, considered the most important publishing house in the theology sector; the journalist Lorenzo Fazzini, from Colognola ai Colli, is now editorial manager of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana; Lucia Vantini, professor of philosophical anthropology in Verona, since 2021 she has presided over the Coordination of Italian theologians; and the vice dean of the Theological Faculty of the Triveneto, Don Riccardo Battocchio, was appointed president of the Italian Theological Association.
Transform yourself so as not to succumb
This one situation with which a Church must deal which, to move forward, needs men and women “of good will”, whether they wear the cassock or not. The future, at least the most immediate one, will see some parishes lose their legal configuration (ending up being incorporated by neighboring ones) while keeping places of prayer open, at least as long as there is a community attending them. «The “fraternity” will take care of everything composed of 3 or 4 priests who together will take care of an area of 7-8 parishes, for a total of 15-20 thousand faithful” predicts Don Alessio Graziani, the director of the diocesan weekly The Voice of the Berici.
He’s the only one compromise deemed acceptable. The alternative is that, after the string of abandoned warehouses, Veneto also finds itself dealing with an expanse of disused seminaries and religious structures. It’s already happening: in Bassano the Capuchin convent closed after 500 years, the same for that of the friars in Rovigo, while the seminary of San Massimo in Verona has been empty for decades now.
«Religion for centuries represented the glue of society managed, more or less covertly, by the State. But today that world has definitively faded” reflects the sociologist Luca Diotallevi, who in his book The Mass Has Faded addresses the theme of the change taking place in the Catholic world. «The first to sense that a new cycle would open it was Pope Paul VI, who already in the 1960s imagined a smaller audience of faithful but more culturally and spiritually prepared, where the role of the laity would acquire ever more importance”.
So the signs were there, the problem – explains Diotallevi – is that the Church was unable to govern this process: «The pontiffs following Paul VI and many bishops preferred to follow other paths, perhaps deluding themselves that they could change the course of events or to reduce renovation costs. Now it’s too late for other shortcuts, and in the meantime the number of disappointed people and those who distance themselves from the Faith are increasing.”. In the end who will remain? «The most convinced: men and women, young and old, who call themselves Catholic by virtue of a free choice and a process of study, reflection and a more responsible participation in the liturgy. Maybe not many, but they will be “practitioners” in the most authentic sense, participating in mass and demonstrating charity. And all of this, ultimately, will allow the Church not to succumb and to carve out a new role within a modern and fully secularized society.”
