As Catholic faith ebbs in Spain, missionary priests come to the rescue

On a Sunday this fall, in the Spanish village of Moià, the church bell tolled 12 times, signaling that the midday Roman Catholic Mass was about to start.

Dressed up for the occasion, Rosa Bordó made her way past the imposing wooden gates of the Baroque church — just as she has done every weekend for most of her 88 years.

Most people, however, were chatting and buying vegetables at the farmers’ market.

“The church used to be packed, even on weekdays,” Bordó said, remembering the old days. “Now, there are only a few of us left. When our generation is gone, the church will have to shut down.”

The decline of Catholicism in Spain mirrors that of Christianity as a whole across Europe, the continent that exported the religion worldwide.

In contrast, Christianity is thriving in Africa, home to the most followers nowadays, and in Latin America, which has also surpassed Europe in the number of Christians, according to figures from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

This tectonic shift in the demographics of the world’s largest religion is prompting another remarkable change: Countries like Spain, which for centuries sent missionary expeditions to evangelize the world, now rely on foreign priests — most often from former colonies — to come preach at home.

In Moià, this phenomenon has translated into the local Catholic parish being led, for the first time, by a pastor from Africa: Father Fulgence Hitayezu. 

In a recent sermon, as Hitayezu addressed his parish from the altar, his voice, amplified by crackly loudspeakers, bounced off the thick stone walls and reverberated across the church. The building looked vast, yet hollow. There was room for hundreds of people on the benches, but no more than 50 were in the room, the majority of them of advanced age.

“Nobody ever enters the church, but some do leave — when they die,” said Hitayezu, 52, in an interview recorded a year ago. “We see the number of parishioners going down, and we worry what will happen in 10 years.”

By contrast, in Hitayezu’s home country of Rwanda, mass attendance is so high that new churches must be built in order to keep up.

Christianity’s presence in Africa dates back to the early days of the religion two millennia ago, but its great spread across the continent came during the modern colonial era. Over the 20th century, the number of followers boomed as African nations gained independence. 

Hitayezu grew up in the rural parish of Ruli, in the northern district of Gakenke. As a young child, most priests he met were not African, but European.

As a teenager, when he decided to join the seminary as his best chance to get a secondary education for free, his friends joked about the improbability of him becoming a priest with his dark skin.

While Christian missions are often regarded as a pillar of European colonialism, Hitayezu sees them as a force of good, and credits them for “illuminating the true God” to pagan communities while bringing improvements in hygiene, nutrition and education.

Hitayezu’s own life was radically transformed by his relationship to a missionary with whom he lived between 1995 and 1996, a turbulent period in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. His name was Father Amat Berenguer, and he came from a village only 9 miles away from Moià, in Spain’s northeast region of Catalonia. It was Berenguer who, years after Hitayezu had already been ordained as priest, proposed he transfer to his own diocese in Spain.

Startled by the offer, Hitayezu was full of questions. “In Rwanda, we live in a community, but here [in Spain] the priest lives all alone and must take care of himself,” he recalled. “I didn’t even know how to cook, so how could I do it?”

Eventually, he agreed. He arrived in Catalonia in the summer of 2010, and was quickly appointed by the Bishop of Vic to serve as priest in the diocese. He led multiple parishes before becoming the rector of Moià in 2016. In the meantime, he had to adjust to a new life: He learned the Catalan language by watching TV, and learned to cook by asking his parishioners for recipes whenever they invited him over for a meal.

While Hitayezu is troubled by the increase of secularism in his parishes, he has learned to be philosophical about it. “The first stone of this church was laid in 939, and up until the 1980s, the church was full,” he said.

In Rwanda, Catholicism is way younger, a little over a century old, he added.

However, for other foreign priests in Spain, coming to terms with the faith’s inexorable decline has been harder, and some even blame themselves for the situation, which has become a matter of concern for Catholic authorities.

“We have learned that we must accompany them to help them deal with it,” said Juan Carlos Mateos, a spokesperson for Spain’s Episcopal Conference. “They go from vibrant communities to languishing ones, so it’s a shock.”

There are no official figures for the number of foreign priests in Spain, but in some dioceses they account for over a third of the total, according to Mateos.

The trend started in the 1980s: First, priests came from abroad to study in Spain and, on the side, helped out as pastors in the diocese; then, they started to come just to serve as pastors.

The arrival of foreign priests to Spain was timely.

The secularization of Spanish society has been sharp over the past half a century, since the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which had strong ties to the Catholic Church. Since 1978, the number of Spaniards who identify as Catholic has fallen from 90% to 56%, with the majority now being non-practicing, according to Spain’s CIS public pollster.

Priests have also fallen in number, down by a third, and grown older too, from an average age of 49 to 65. Last year, only 79 new priests were ordained — a historic low.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church in Spain has over 23,000 parishes to care for — the most in the world after Italy.

“It’s clear that the numbers don’t add up,” Mateos said.

With Catholicism in decline, some believe it’s not only priests that Spain should import from abroad, but also a different approach to religious services and community building.

“In Latin America, they’re being innovative,” said Mery Josefina Briceño, 43, a Venezuelan living in Moià. In her country, she said, masses are “more dynamic, interactive and more appealing to younger people,” with “musical instruments, like drums or a piano.”

Pulling out her phone, she went to the Instagram page of her home parish in Venezuela, with 14,000 online followers, and started swiping through reels of exuberant services, condensed sermons and joyful parishioners speaking to the camera and inviting people to attend the next mass.

“Here, they should adapt, but they don’t,” Briceño said. “Masses have stayed the same for centuries.”

Hitayezu has his own view as to what the Catholic Church could do to re-evangelize Europe. Drawing inspiration from the missionary experience, he believes priests should not stay inside the church waiting for people to come, but instead go meet them outside, where they can get to know them and wait for their questions.

“It’s like what Jesus said,” Hitayezu explained.

He went on to quote the Bible: “When Jesus was asked by his followers where he lived, he responded: ‘Come and see.’”