The parish: Church amid people’s homes” “

In an age in which “the need is emerging for the sacred and for strong bonds of affection in the context of very fragmented experiences”, the “secret” of the parish consists in “its passion to foster personal growth”, through its “relation with people, families and the fabric of the society that lives and works on the territory”. So write the Italian bishops, in the final document of their 52nd general assembly, held in Assisi from 17 to 20 November on the theme “The parish: Church that lives amid people’s homes”. It’s the first to be dedicated entirely to the parish, and the delegates included 20 parish priests, as well as several experts and guests. “When we ask why the parish is the best-known image of the Church – says the document – the answer lies just in its character of being close and welcoming to people”. Not forgetting the fact, add the bishops, that “in many places the parish has been and remains a fundamental factor for the very formation of the fabric of civil society. Non-Christians too are familiar with the parish. At times, indeed, it seems they, rather than others, are those who most often ring the door-bell of the parish priest”. “The dense network of parishes over the whole of Italian territory, their vitality and their capacity to play a pastoral and also social service, attentive to the needs of the population, are an extraordinary richness of the Church in Italy”, writes John Paul II in the message he sent to the 250 bishops gathered at Assisi. The Pope calls the parish “a theme of fundamental importance in the life and mission of the Church”. In Italy there are 228 dioceses, and 25,865 parishes. The “primacy” of the parish for an “integrated and missionary pastoral service”. “The key figure of the parish, also with a view to its indispensable renewal, remains that of the parish priest”, said Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), in his keynote address. The associations and ecclesial movements, added Msgr. Renato Corti, vice-president of the CEI, “cannot be substitutes for the parish”, which remains “the fundamental cell of the diocese”. The final objective on which we need to converge, said Ruini, is an “integrated pastoral service” that may overcome the “temptations of self-sufficiency” and be formed through “collaboration and integration with neighbouring parishes” and with other “ecclesial bodies present on the territory”, such as religious communities, associations and movements, through “spaces of creativity, inventiveness and flexibility”. “Young” and “foreign” priests on the increase. Even though Italy is not immune from the “global decrease” of the clergy, which is of the order of 24%, and in some regions is set to “rise to 40%”, the crisis of vocations is not such as to make the Italian Church “succumb to despondency”. Indeed, the downturn in the number of priests is “absorbable” and, if compared with the situation of other “Latin” countries, shows that Italy “is not in difficulty” in “maintaining a popular image of the Church”, which in the next twenty years will be developed “by a far younger and more foreign clergy”, given the growth of immigrants that characterises the Italian scenario. That is the situation of priests “in service” in Italy as described by Msgr. Giuseppe Betori, general secretary of the CEI, who was commenting on a survey conducted by the sociologist Luca Diotallevi (and distributed to bishops), from which it emerges that the average age of the 32,990 priests currently present in Italian dioceses is almost 60, and that 4.5% of them consists of priests born abroad, with a highly variable regional distribution, ranging from 0.9% in Lombardy to 21.3% in Lazio. The “style” of pastoral units. “Pastoral units” do not “supplant” the parish, but insert it “in a wider and more appropriate network”, in the perspective of the “integrated pastoral service” called for by Cardinal Ruini. So writes Msgr. Domenico Sigalini, vice-president of the Centre of Pastoral Guidance, in a document distributed to the bishops. One of the “protagonists” of this new pastoral experience, present in hardly more than one diocese in three, must be the laity, says the same document. And the “model” for this lay involvement is Catholic Action, in its promotion of “the evangelising daily relation in personal life, in the family, at school, in the work place …”.