Faith Digest: Cathedral will stay open

Canterbury Cathedral not closing its doors. England’s best-known cathedral and mother church of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion will stay open to the public, despite the fact two-thirds of the historic building is in urgent need of repair. The BBC reported Canterbury Cathedral soon would close to visitors after it missed out on a 10.6 million pound ($16.2 million) request to the Heritage Lottery Fund for structural repairs. However, cathedral spokesman Christopher Robinson dismissed the report as exaggerated. “The Germans didn’t force us to close Canterbury Cathedral during the Second World War,” he said. “So, there’s no chance it will be closed to visitors because we need to carry out some urgent repairs.” Each year, more than a million pilgrims visit Canterbury Cathedral, which has stood on the same site about 60 miles southeast of London 1,400 years. The landmark cathedral receives no support from either the British government or the Church of England, and is dependent on the generosity of individuals, trusts and foundations.

Harold Camping may be facing doomsday. California radio evangelist Harold Camping Two years ago, radio evangelist Harold Camping predicted the end of the world. Now, longtime aides say his false predictions are likely to result in the end of his California-based Family Radio ministry. The Contra Costa Times reported the ministry has sold its prominent stations and laid off veteran staffers, with net assets dropping from $135 million in 2007 to $29.2 million in 2011, according to tax records. Since the incorrect prediction, donations have dropped 70 percent, ministry insiders told the newspaper. Records indicate the network took out a loan to keep going. Camping, 91, predicted the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011. A few days after that date, he said his calculations were off by five months. In March 2012, he declared his May prediction was “incorrect and sinful” and announced his ministry no longer would predict when the world would end.

Three popes at the Vatican. When a recent visit by the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church to meet the head of the Roman Catholic Church coincided with a retired pope’s return to Rome, it signaled a unique situation—three popes within the Vatican walls at the same time. Pope Tawadros II—on his first foreign trip since he was elected in November—stayed at the Vatican’s guesthouse where Pope Francis also lives. Benedict XVI, the emeritus pope, returned to the Vatican two months after his resignation and now lives in a revamped convent a five-minute walk away.

British church attendance stabilizes. Average weekly attendance at England’s 16,247 Anglican parishes was 1.1 million in 2011, representing a drop of just 0.3 percent from the previous year’s figures. Annual statistics reveal a substantial increase in attendance at the country’s storied cathedrals. Christmas churchgoing rose by 14 percent, christenings were up 4.3 percent, and adult baptisms were up 5 percent. The number of weddings was down 3.6 percent, to 51,880. The 1.1 million Britons in church pales in comparison to the estimated 22 million—about four in 10 Britons—who are considered official members of the Church of England. Overall Sunday attendance is down from 1.14 million in 2000, falling about 1 percent a year until 2011.

Catholic population surges across the Global South. Gains in Asia and Africa are making up for losses in Europe among the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, according to Vatican statistics, signaling a shift of the church’s center of gravity toward the Global South heralded by the election of the first Latin American pope. While growth in the Americas and Europe mirrored the growth of the general population, Catholic growth in Africa and Asia was almost double the regions’ population growth. The world’s 413,418 priests at the end of 2011 showed a slight increase from the previous year, continuing a trend of slow growth that began in 2000 after decades of decline. A rapid increase in vocations in Africa and Asia—more than 3,000 new priests in a year—balanced the shrinking ranks of the priesthood in Europe. In the Americas, the number of priests remained stable.