A true martyr of Christ, Carlos Sacheri; assassinated by terrorists in 1974 while leaving church after Mass in San Isidro. He was killed in front of his wife and seven children.
A Brief Prologue to Monsignor Aguer’s Article

I read these wise words with a heavy heart because I can tell how measured the message of Monsignor is. I could not describe with such calm (and poignant) words the way I see and suffer the present situation but I will try to comment something in my next post. Suffer we must because we are not better than Our Master who endured the Cross and thus invited us to follow Him. This too shall pass and glorious days will shine upon us one more time. There is no Glory Sunday without  Good Friday. These dark days are our good Friday.

The decline of the Church and the pontificate of Francis

Recently we celebrated the twelfth anniversary of Francis ‘s pontificate. Vatican press releases tend to be self-congratulatory. It’s very difficult to encompass the vast and diverse ecclesial reality in a single judgment. But from a certain vantage point, it’s possible to contemplate the surroundings. I can do so, then, from this corner of the far south that is Argentina, a nation that is (or once was?) predominantly Catholic. One saying goes, “When you have seen one, you’ve seen them all.” In this sense, the decline of the Church is evident. The bishops live in their own clouds. The seminaries are populated by young people whose number can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There is even one seminary, centuries old, that in 2025 did not have a single seminarian enrolled! Vocations are not surging. Christ’s mandate (“Go therefore and make disciples —panta ta éthne— of all nations” — Matthew 28:19) is always waiting to be fulfilled. Where are the apostles? The people are bewildered; many faithful yearn for better times.

I think Pope Paul VI’s lament is still relevant :

“We expected—after the Second Vatican Council—a flourishing spring, but instead a harsh winter came”; “through some crack, the smoke of Satan has filtered into the temple of God.”

The Church’s presence in society is severely limited; journalists are aware of this because they recognize, with a historical perspective, that in our country, the Catholic Church has always been an official entity. We are considered to be a Catholic country. But baptisms are scarce; the birth rate in Argentina has plummeted: in 2023, with 460,902 births, the lowest figure in the last 50 years was recorded! And marriage no longer exists; now there are “couples.” The Church’s public presence is nonexistent; it only seeps into the media if it makes political judgments, especially against government.

Specific task

The Church must focus on its specific task: making men Christians, imbuing their conduct with the mandates of Scripture and Tradition, and leading them toward Heaven. The successive crises of the clergy leave a mark, especially because they increase society’s distancing from the Christian ideal. There is no Christian culture; Catholic universities provide partial theological information, but they fail to fulfill their primary function, which is to make the Church present in Argentine society, that is, to create a Christian culture. I don’t know of any outstanding Catholic thinkers, such as, for example, Carlos Sacheri ; he was assassinated in 1974, leaving church after Mass in San Isidro, in front of his wife and seven children, by terrorists from the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP).

The Statistical Yearbook of the Church has just been published, with figures corresponding to the 2022-2023 biennium. It reveals that the number of bishops has increased: from 5,353 in 2022 to 5,430 in 2023. And, at the same time, the number of priests has decreased: at the end of 2023 there were 406,996 worldwide; a decrease of 734 compared to 2022. And, in the case of seminarians, the situation is more than worrying: a sustained decline has been recorded since 2012; and it has dropped from 108,481 in 2022 to 106,495 in 2023. In other words: the number of priests and seminarians is decreasing, while the number of bishops is increasing! In Argentina, we also have growing number of these: in the last twelve years, the number of auxiliary bishops has multiplied. And there are dioceses in which the number of bishops exceeds or equals the number of seminarians.

As a Catholic, I believe in the Church and I love her; I long to see her flourish. I pray for her and for the Supreme Pontiff; for the health of his body and, above all, of his soul. Sixty years after the closing of Vatican II, it is time to face reality. The “Church on the move ,” seeking those who do not know Christ or have distanced themselves from Him, must not be a “Church on the run” from its own essence and mission.

Monsignor Hector Aguer, Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata, Argentina
Article originally published in La Prensa, Buenos Aires on March 31, 2025