Andrea Riccardi (Rome, 1950) is one of the most outstanding intellectuals of the Catholic field in Italy. Founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, an association that has more than 50,000 members in seventy countries around the world, Riccardi is the author of various books on various aspects of Christianity. He was Minister for Integration (Social Affairs) in the national unity government presided over by Mario Monti between 2011 and 2013, and his name appeared a few weeks ago among the possible candidates for the presidency of the Italian Republic. Andrea Riccardi just posted the church burns (Harp), a book in which he reflects on the serious difficulties that Catholicism is going through at this time.
Update
“Catholicism must better understand today’s world and recover enthusiasm”
You start with two images: the burning of Nôtre Dame in Paris and the return to Muslim worship of the old basilica of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, declared a museum in 1931.
They are two images that speak to us of an era. The Notre Dame fire made a great impression on me. That fire made many people think: what if the Church collapsed? It was a tragic metaphor. The Catholic Church could disappear, for internal reasons, due to abandonment, due to fatigue. That image moved me. My book, written during the epidemic, is not limited to the present but rather aims to investigate a crisis that comes from afar. I try to investigate what has happened in Italy, in Spain, in Germany, in France… especially in France, since French Catholicism became a model for the post-conciliar Church.
a charismatic pope
“Francisco is not a communist, he is the Pope who has put the poor at the center”
What has happened in Spain?
A national-Catholic country that becomes in a few decades a very secular and secularized country. Some Catholics believed that with Franco and Salazar national-Catholicism would have ended, but now we see how it reappears in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland.
Catholicism is dying out in Europe, it is almost extinct in the Middle East, it does not grow in the Far East, it stagnates in North America and it comes up against in Latin America and Africa the strong expansion of neo-Protestant sects that offer a self-help religiosity. Is the map correct?
It does not seem to me a wrong cartography.
cases of pederasty
“In the face of abuse, the Church must clean up but also recover serenity”
Is the rise of neo-Protestant sects the main challenge facing the Catholic Church today?
It is a challenge, yes. We are facing the rise of new religious expressions linked to the myth of prosperity, to the search for individual prosperity with the help of the biblical story. These neo-Protestant sects, which should not be confused with the Lutherans and other churches that emerged from the Reformation, are an increasingly widespread phenomenon, not only in Africa and Latin America.
Is it a religiosity more adapted to globalization, precariousness and uprooting?
Look, I don’t believe in an absolutely Marxist interpretation of history, but I’ll also tell you that you can’t ignore economic backgrounds, the market, social life, in short, when you talk about religious and spiritual phenomena. Historic Christianity reached great breadth during the period when the West meant modernity. Today, with a global market, with a strong intensity of consumer psychology, these sects are growing that turn biblical language into a psychological aid. They do not speak of solidarity, of communion. They appeal to individual prosperity.
Francisco, the first non-European Pope, one of the visible heads of Catholicism in Latin America, was chosen to face this reality. Are you getting it?
Francis is a charismatic Pope, as was John Paul II. Two very different characters, united by charisma. I don’t think there is a destiny of unstoppable decline. I rather believe that reality needs to be grasped better. The council invited us to understand the sign of the times . That is precisely what should be done now. The Catholic Church currently presents a cultural deficit: it should once again make an effort to better understand the world. And something else is missing…
Which one?
Enthusiasm is lacking. That new Christianity of the sects is enthusiastic: it exalts feelings. I think that in the Catholic Church at the moment there is a lack of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is not superficiality. Etymologically, enthusiasm in Greek means: “God in us”. Today’s world must be faced with enthusiasm. Today in Europe there is no enthusiasm. We have become a rich periphery.
In Spain, the left applauds the Pope and continues to cultivate anticlericalism. In turn, much of the right is increasingly critical of the Pope and defends the Church.
In Italy it could be said that the same thing happens, with nuances. Italy has always been very pontifical. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome. There is another paradox, however. A taxi driver in Guatemala put it to me: the Church has chosen the people and the people have chosen the sects. Look, Francisco is not a communist, nor an unbridled progressive. Francisco is a man who belongs to traditional evangelical religiosity. He is an essentially spiritual man with a very strong and clearly leadership-oriented personality. He is the Pope who has put the poor at the center of the Church.
But at the center of the debate about the Church today are the complaints and investigations of sexual abuse.
The problem is very serious and the Church seems insecure. The Church has insisted a lot on sexual morality throughout its history and now people, seeing such serious cases of pedophilia, are outraged and wonder about the solidity of the Church’s discourse. The Church must be a safe space for young people, for women, for all the faithful. And there is a problem of public opinion that must be faced. But more things must be said: these problems do not refer only to the Church. You have to clean, but you also have to recover serenity. The serenity of the victims, but also the serenity of the members of the Church.
His conclusion?
The Church burns, but it is not burned. The epidemic has shown us a society with strong altruistic feelings, solidarity, predisposed to the common good. There is Christianity. In the book I quote a phrase from Father Alexander Men, the last Orthodox priest assassinated by the Soviet KGB: “Christianity has only just begun.”
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