In Venice tomorrow, Pope will find a church struggling against decline

ROME – As Pope Francis makes his way to Venice tomorrow, he’ll not only be visiting one of the most fabled and romanticized cities in the world. He’ll also be confronting one of the leading symbols of the statistical decline of Catholicism in its traditional heartland, in a spot once hailed by another pope as a “hunter’s snare for vocations.”

In the surrounding region of Veneto, which is divided into nine dioceses, fifty years ago there were more than 6,000 priests, both diocesan and religious orders.