Catholicism has its ups and downs

 Nossa Senhora de Fatima

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVl has been buried. Pope Francis has mobility impairment. The Catholic religion is in decline. But the Sanctuary of Fatima in Portugal is surging ahead and this will again welcome millions of pilgrims and tourists.

Benedict, the first pontiff to resign in six centuries, did so in February 2013; ostensibly because of ill health, while being criticised for insufficient action against child sexual abusers within the Church, particularly when he was still the Archbishop of Munich. A one-page account of Benedict’s otherwise much-praised papacy was put in a metal cylinder and placed in his coffin.

The liberal Pope Francis spoke very highly of his conservative predecessor during last Thursday’s funeral, even though they differed on certain aspects of their leadership. One thing they did share was concern about Catholicism’s steep decline during both their papacies.

Revelations about child sexual abuse by a great many priests over many years has been one of the main reasons for the decline. The hundreds of thousands of victims of often repeated abuse were mainly boys, but also girls, mostly young teenagers, but some aged six or less. The criminal abuse went on and on across Europe, including Portugal, North and South America, Australia and elsewhere. The Church often showed cruel indifference towards victims’ complaints. Regrets and apologies have been expressed, but few of the culprits have been prosecuted and few of the victims have been compensated.

Other non-religious networks have been just as guilty and some are undoubtedly still getting away with it, but the paedophilia within the Catholic Church has received maximum media coverage. Disgust and lack of trust in the Catholic hierarchy have caused many members of the laity to leave the Church altogether. There have been many other reasons for the walkout.

Portugal is a predominately Catholic country. It always has been since Roman times. It is renowned as one of the most devout in Europe. An estimated  84% of the population have been baptised and are at least nominally Catholic, but only 18% - and perhaps less - are thought to regularly attend Mass.

As in other countries, elderly traditionalists have rejected the modernisation brought about by the Second Vatican Council. The young are bored with the dogma, priestly arrogance and hypocrisy. They are tired of the controversy over such issues as birth control, abortion and the notion that gay togetherness is a sin. Divorced or civilly remarried couples have been made to feel unwelcome. Across the Catholic world pews are emptying, chapel doors are closing.

Pope Francis has tried to reverse the trend, but bishops are divided and so are the laity about the wisdom of his efforts. A summit meeting on these issues is to be held in the Holy See this October.

Aside from the challenges facing him, Francis wrote his own resignation letter well in advance in case ill-health should impair him from continuing in office. He did so in 2013, well before he had to have bowel surgery. Now aged 86, Francis has a knee problem that forces him to use a wheelchair. He quips, however, that he depends much more on his brain than his knee.

Francis remains remarkably active. At the end of this month he will be travelling to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan for an ecumenical peace pilgrimage. He is scheduled to be in Portugal from 1^st to 6th August for World Youth Day in Lisbon. No doubt he will also visit Portugal’s most holy site, the Sanctuary of Fatima. He last visited Fatima in 2017 for the 100^th anniversary of the apparitions reported by three shepherd children.`

Three other popes have visited Fatima: Paul Vl (1967), John Paul ll (1982,1992 and 2000), Benedict XVl  (2010). Another visit by Francis will most certainly add enthusiasm to the enormous number of pilgrims and tourists from around the world planning to visit the shrine this year. 

April 13, the anniversary of the first Marian apparition, and October 13, the anniversary of the so-called Miracle of the Sun, are the most popular visiting dates. Many pilgrims wall long distances to get there. By car, Lisbon is about 1 hr 20 min (128km via the A1) from Fatima.  Faro is about 3 hr 10 min away (363 km via the A2).

Big biodiversity breakthroughs

 

There is reason to be fairly optimistic about major advances in international attitudes towards ending the devastation humans have been causing to other forms of life on the planet.

The United Nations Biodiversity Conference held near the end of the year in Montreal, Canada, received scant publicity compared with the CoP27 summit in Egypt in November. The biodiversity conference was to have been held two years ago in China, but had to be postponed because of the COVID pandemic. This time it was presided over by China and hosted instead by Canada with delegates from 196 nations, including Portugal and the rest of the European Unio 

At the same time as backing up all other international efforts to limit global warming by 2030, the latest biodiversity deal features important agreements about conserving wildlife and habitats. The first of the key points agreed was a sweeping project to protect 30% of the world’s lands and 30% of the oceans by 2030. So far, only about 17% of the land and 8% of the sea is protected from such activities as excessive amounts of mining, farming and fishing. The second key point was that developed countries agreed to contribute $30 billion by 2030 to help with biodiversity in developing countries.

Dozens of other more technical matters were settled, including monitoring mechanisms and areas for future work to stop crises that, if left unchecked, could jeopardise the world’s food and fresh water supplies.

The United States and the Holy See were the only places in the world not party to this landmark meeting. The US did not engage as Republican politicians blocked entry because they are typically opposed to joining treaties, according to the New York Times.

The European Union contributed a lot to the Montreal conference. It had published its own report on biodiversity some weeks earlier. As described by the European Commission, the EU’s new strategy is a comprehensive, ambitious and long-term plan to protect nature and reverse the degradation of ecosystems. The strategy contains specific actions and commitments to putting Europe’s biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030 for the benefit of people, the climate and the planet.

While the strategy aims to establish a much larger network of protected areas on land and at sea by 2030, it also wants to build confidence in the resilience of EU societies to the impacts of climate change, food insecurity and protecting wildlife from illegal trade and disease outbreaks.

In Portugal, 401 areas comprising more than 22% of the land and 2.5% of marine waters are officially protected areas. The European Natura 2000 sites in Portugal, covering national and natural parks and other special landscapes, give protection to 439 of the most endangered species and 102 of the most vulnerable habitats in the EU.

Independent organisations are pressing hard to stop deforestation and other shocking human activities such as hunting increasingly rare animals, including elephants, rhinos, leopards and tigers, for profit or pleasure.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the largest independent organisation of its kind, is working closely with many countries, including those in the EU. It is committed to protecting all of Europe’s unique wildlife and biodiversity, especially the Mediterranean region and the Black Sea basin. Now that the EU strategy to 2030 has been released, the WWF says it will work to ensure the European Parliament and the European Council support the implementation of the objectives.

Scientists say that unless humans radically mend their ways and curb global warming along with biodiversity destruction, the world could be facing the calamitous loss of a million species, the greatest mass extinction since the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and three-quarters of all other lifeforms 66 million years ago. In its 2022 Living Planet Report, the WWF states that there has been an average 65% decline in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish since 1970.

The report has a clear note of optimism however: “Together, we can take action to create lasting solutions and protect the future of nature.

 

 

An insight into dementia villages

A dementia village in Berlin

A new report gives an encouraging insight into the benefits of residential villages specially designed for those with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, benefits that outweigh those of traditional nursing homes.

The report follows the recent positive news about trials into a drug capable of slowing cognitive decline. Now comes information from the Bloomberg Media Company describing much better community environments for dementia patients. It’s all good news at a time when developing better ideas is imperative as the number of people suffering various types of cognitive disease are predicted to triple over the next 30 years. That would mean an increase to 150 thousand in Portugal and 150 million worldwide.

The residential villages are small, enclosed and safe with public spaces to allow those with dementia, their families and friends, professional workers and volunteers to mix freely and enjoy a relatively high quality of life. Such villages have been built in parts of Europe and as far afield as Japan and New Zealand.

“The concept is resonating as societies grapple with aging populations, with rising fundamental questions about what care for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative disorders should look like, and whether the traditional nursing home model is outdated,” according to the Bloomberg report.

It quotes Jannette Spiering, one of the founders of the village idea first convened in the Netherlands: “We said, what do we have to change to make this more of a home? How could we create a community where you can go on with your own life?”  

The Netherlands project, located in Amsterdam, has about 160 inhabitants divided into various groups housed in 23 personalised residences.

In Japan, elderly people already make up almost a third of the population, compared to almost a quarter in Portugal. Japan has been working to ensure those with dementia can stay at home for as long as possible by training more social workers and others to personally engage with those with the disease, but the village concept takes that further by recreating the real world within safely enclosed spaces.

Those living in small village communities may be able to join together in pairs or small groups in doing some everyday things. In New Zealand, for example, the six or seven residents sharing individual rooms in a house can, with help if necessary, make shopping lists, wash clothes, go for walks, do a little gardening or just sit quietly chatting in the village square.

Research is being conducted in a village in the south of France into which safe but open liberties can lessen some dementia symptoms and, if so, how. If researchers succeed in showing that the holistic approach can slow cognitive decline, it could lead to a different approach for dementia care at a time when much of the medical profession and many members of the public have pinned their hopes  - and financial investments – on new but so far moderately effective medication.

People in the French pilot project, launched in the middle of the COVID pandemic, can stroll or be pushed in wheelchairs down walkways and under vaulted arches, stopping to chat with other residents or welcome visitors outside a supermarket, play scrabble outside a cafe, engage in an exercise class on park benches or have a haircut in the local salon.

“Here you are making people better, not by giving them medication, but simply because the environment is nicer,” says Paola Barbarino, CEO of Alzheimer’s Disease International, an umbrella organisation with no financial ties to any of the villages. 

Not everyone is happy with the village concept. The main criticism is that residents are trapped in a make-believe environment. Nor are the villages cheap to build, but proponents say they are less expensive to operate than nursing homes.

A French village with 120 residents could cost nearly €30 million to construct.  Building a nursing home in the same region with a similar number of beds would cost €10 million less. The maximum amount for village residents without any state or regional aid is about €2,000 a month. With subsidies it can be as low as €250 a month. A private room in a nursing home meanwhile would be about €9,000 a month, according to the international Alzheimer’s association.  

Alzheimer’s: reason for hope

Reports of a breakthrough in the treatment of Alzheimer’s have given hope to countless people close to the estimated 50 thousand people in Portugal and 50 million worldwide suffering from this disease.

There is still no cure for Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. The latest reports refer to positive results from trials conducted on a drug that can slow the early stages of the disease. It is being described as the first drug to provide a real treatment option for Alzheimer’s patients.

The scientific committee of the organisation Alzheimer’s Portugal immediately issued a statement saying, “this news encourages us, and all of those on the side of Alzheimer’s patients, because it is a positive step in the fight against the disease.”

The statement went on to summarise the trials and results so far as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A drug called lecanemab has been shown to reduce patients’ overall mental decline by 27% over 18 months. This may seem modest after more than 20 years of research by many specialists to fund significant remedies, but the new therapy is already being hailed as “momentous” and the start of a new era of Alzheimer’s treatment.

“While the clinical benefits seem somewhat limited, it can be expected they will become more apparent over time," says Dr Bart De Strooper, director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at  University College London. “it’s such a win for our field,” says Dr Liana Apostolova, a neurologist at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

“Quite promising” is among the less enthusiastic comments from some researchers who feel more analysis is required as lecanemab has been associated with bleeding and swelling in the brain. The drug has yet to be approved by regulatory authorities.

Alzheimer’s is increasingly common, mainly among the elderly. It is a major cause of death in some countries. Many patients die within seven years of contracting the disease.

 Memory loss is the most common early indication of Alzheimer’s. This is followed in time with confusion about familiar places and people, struggling with making sensible decisions and carrying out simple tasks. Family and friends have to step in to help as early as possible.

Alzheimer’s Portugal, founded in 1988, is a member of the Alzheimer’s Europe non-governmental organisation dedicated specifically to promoting the quality of life of people with dementia along with their families and carers. Their well-qualified volunteers are continually giving advice and practical help.

The scientific committee of Alzheimer’s Portugal concluded their statement by saying: “It is not yet the solution that will solve the problem of curing the disease, but it is a small and important step in that direction.” 

Meanwhile, on a much grander scale, specialist scientists are predicting that within the next few decades there could be a second cognitive revolution that could radically change the internal mental processes that drive human behaviour. The astonishing predictions include the notion that human brains will evolve in such a way that they may be able to hugely expand their power of thinking, producing “super humans” with a much extended and perhaps indefinite lifespan.

More on this later perhaps. For now let’s keep our feet on the ground and wish Alzheimer’s and other dementia patients well.

What next for Isabel dos Santos?

The enigmatic Isabel dos Santos, arguably the most famous and infamous person in modern Portuguese history, has certainly had her ups and downs. Life for her now seems to be at an all time low and it is difficult to see what she can do about it.

The incumbent government in her homeland, the former Portuguese colony of Angola, which was returned to power in the general election in August this year, wants to finally put her behind bars for alleged corruption on a grand scale. As in Angola, the Portuguese authorities have frozen all her assets in major companies here. The Netherlands has done the same. Her reputation in the United States is such that she has been banned from entering the country.

Things became all the more serious last week when Interpol issued a red notice asking global law enforcement agencies to locate and provisionally arrest her pending extradition, surrender or similar legal actions.

This 49-year-old widow with three children is believed to be living in exile in the United Arab Emirates, though sometimes making visits to Lisbon and London. She had managed the stakes in her Lisbon companies for 12 years before immediately closing all operations when her assets were frozen in June 2020.

It is claimed she is now hiding from justice. She insists she is not and points out that she has always turned up on time when requested for questioning by the government’s investigative lawyers in Lisbon. She believes she is being politically persecuted, the victim of  false conspiracy assertions.

Despite this, she declared she would consider running for president in Angola’s general election in August. “I want to serve my country,” she said from an undisclosed location in a video interview with the German news organisation Deutsche Welle. That was a strange statement as Angola is the one place above all others she needs to steer clear of as she would be arrested on arrival for allegedly causing vast losses for the oil producing yet economically struggling nation.

With dual citizenship in Angola and Russia, it might be possible for Isabel dos Santos to go to Russia as a last ditch place to live in exile and avoid arrest, trial and likely long-term imprisonment.

Born in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, Isabel was educated in England, opened a restaurant in Angola in her early twenties and went on to create a business empire as an investment entrepreneur, thus becoming Africa’s wealthiest woman with assets worth billions of dollars.

Her life was complicated at an early age when her father, former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, divorced her Russian mother, Tatiana, in 2002. Her mother took Isobel to England to attend an all-girls school in Kent and later to complete an electrical engineering degree at King’s College, London. Her mother died in 2020.  Her father, who had met Tatiana while he was studying as a young man in Azerbaijan, went on to become Angola’s president and dictator from 1978 to 2017. He married again at least twice and Isobel was the eldest of his 10 children. Her husband died in the United Arab Emirates in 2020. Her father died in Spain in July this year.

She has repeatedly denied allegations of embezzlement and money laundering, including charges in 2020 that she and her husband had stashed a billion dollars worth of Angolan state funds into their own companies while her father was president. She claims this is all false information, conspiracy lies invented by and on behalf of her father’s successor, Joao Lourenco, who has served as president since 2017.

Much of Isobel dos Santos’ alleged criminal behaviour has been exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in their ‘Luanda Leaks’ and subsequent ‘Pandora Papers’ documents.

The total value of her frozen assets is not clear. Nor is how much she has left to live on. One thing is clear, however: money does not always buy happiness.

 

Climate crisis: who really cares?

Public opinion in Portugal is one small but very positive part of the extraordinary divergence of thinking around the world on the subject of climate change, which is complicating what the overwhelming majority of climate scientists regard as a looming crisis that could become calamitous.

A high percentage of people in Portugal – higher than in the big majority of other countries – believe the scientific evidence that global warming is due to human activity and that it is ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ worrying.

Opinions vary greatly in the United States, the world’s second biggest polluter of greenhouse gasses. A huge number of people in the U.S. don’t care about global warming and many don’t believe it’s a problem or even happening. A lot of this hinges on political ideology and the Christian religion, according to recent studies.

The Pew Research Centre, a think-tank based in Washington D.C., this month published the results of a comprehensive survey showing that a majority of Americans “appear sceptical” of climate scientists. No more than a third of the American public give climate scientists high marks for their understanding of climate change. Even fewer say climate scientists understand the best ways to address climate change.

Almost a quarter of all American Christians, including 38% of Protestant Evangelicals, do not think climate change is a serious problem or a problem at all, according to the PEW study.

Evangelicals are estimated to number about 100 million, not that far short of a third of the entire US population. Most are said to favour the conservative Republican policies.

A poll last year put the number of Catholic adults at 21% of the total U.S. population, but politically they are split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. They are also roughly split 50-50 on whether global warming is due to human activity, and if it is a serious problem or not. 

Non-religious Americans tend to support the liberal Democrats. Only 4% of atheists and 11% of Agnostics consider climate change an insignificant problem.

Overall, there are relatively few climate change doubters or deniers in Portugal, a largely Socialist country where the predominant religion, Catholicism, is declining a lot. The Portuguese are all too familiar with severe heat waves, wildfires, droughts and rising sea levels. So no wonder they accept the scientific evidence that global warming is happening long before the critical deadline limits of 2%C, if not 1.5%C, hoped for by 2050. 

The young in Portugal are among the least confused and most concerned groups in Europe, in part because of this country’s well-understood vulnerability. They have little or no truck with the misinformation being put about by religious groups and large fossil fuel entities whose profits are endangered by the scientific truth.

The London School of Economics and Science reports that the UK’s main club for climate change deniers, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has continued to spread misinformation this year about the impacts of rising levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

A scholarly analysis has concluded that climate scepticism in Germany is underreported and that denial percentages are actually as high as in the USA.

A number of other international studies have found a surprising spread of attitudes in different countries. For example, a survey conducted across G20 countries revealed that more than 90% of people in India, the third largest polluter after China and the USA, wanted to do more to protect nature and stymie the effects of climate change.

 Another study conducted this April showed that 21% of French respondents aged between 35 and 49 were climate sceptics, while 47% thought it “too late to reverse global warming.”

It emerged from a European Union survey this year that Norwegians are very sceptical and that only one in four believe global warming is caused by humans. This compares with eight in ten Italians who do believe humans are responsible.

The latest European Social Survey, an academically driven study conducted across Europe every two years, reports that there has been a particularly large increase in those who are seriously concerned about climate change in Sweden and Hungary. Italy and Spain rank very highly in this regard, but only in Portugal are more than 50% of people “very” or “extremely” worried, according to this survey.

World populations coming and going

 

The global population as of last Tuesday, according to the United Nations, reached 8 billion and is still rising. On the same day, Portugal’s population was said to have been 10,126,454 and falling.

 

United Nations statistics show that in 1950 the global population was only 2.6 billion.  In 2011 it had risen to 7 billion. It is predicted to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11 billion in 2100, catastrophic climate change and wars permitting.

 

For now, 61% of the global population live in Asia, 17% in Africa, 10% in Europe, over 5% in South America and under 5% in North America.

 

China is the country with the largest population (1.4 billion), but India is expected to overtake it next year. Far behind are the United States, (332 million) Indonesia (276.5 million) and Brazil (214 million).

 

The former Portuguese colony of Angola in south-western Africa, with 34 million inhabitants, has the third fastest growing population in the world with 3.4% per year.

 

Germany is the most populated of the European Union’s 27 member states with well over 83 million. Portugal is by no means among the lowest in the EU and has numbers close to those in Sweden.

 

 Portugal’s population has shrunk by 2% in the last decade and it continues to decline because of the low birth rate and the high number of young people emigrating to other European and North American countries.

 

In 2020 the birth rate in Portugal was 1.40 per woman. So the birth rate has indeed been low and it has been low and declining in many other places too. The reasons are said to include women’s empowerment in education and the workforce, lower child mortality and the increased cost of raising children.

 

People are on the move, both inside and outside their country of birth. The number of people leaving Portugal of late has been about 80,000 a year. Most have been seeking further education or better economic opportunities. Similar reasons across the world have pushed people into moving from rural areas into cities. It is expected that 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2045.

 

They are plenty of advantages in living in large urban areas such as Lisbon and Porto with populations of 518,000 and 250,000 respectively, or in mega-cities such as New York with more than 8 million  inhabitants and London, with more than 9 million. One of the big disadvantages of many large urban areas is poor air quality and its impact on health.

 

Climate change, conflict and political instability are expected to cause much more international migration in the coming years.  The flood of refugees from Ukraine is likely to be replicated from African nations if they are made almost uninhabitable by extreme heat, drought and resulting desertification.

 

The relatively well-off foreigners who have moved to reside in Portugal have done so mainly because they are made welcome by friendly people in a peaceful and beautiful country with a Mediterranean climate featuring mild winters.

 

Expatriate residents here account for 6.4% of the total population with about 184,000 Brazilians and 46,000 British. Many foreigners in the last two years have come from a number of other EU countries as well as from Ukraine.

 

The percentage of people aged 65 and over in Portugal has been increasing and last year reached more than 23%. The elderly are becoming more numerous is in many countries as life expectancy rises. Life expectancy in Portugal has risen from about 60 in the mid-1950s to a little over 82 nowadays. This trend may continue globally, but it depends very much on overall human behaviour.

 

Because of such factors as man-made greenhouse gas emissions and violent conflicts, about 700 million people or 9% of the global population are estimated to be living in extreme poverty, that’s to say on less that €2 a day.

 

One of the worst affected places is the large island state of Madagascar situated off the east coast of Africa. People there have long been experiencing desperate hardship because of poor administration, droughts, insufficient irrigation and drinking water, crop failures and criminal gangs stealing cattle and commodities.

 

According to the UN’s World Food Programme, as of the middle of last month 8.8 million people across Madagascar (about 33% of the entire population) are suffering from acute food shortages. That’s one million more than just three months ago. Further deterioration is expected between next month and March next year when two million more people are likely to be going hungry.

 

In his book Origins, a deeply detailed account of the evolution of all species of life from geological, paleontological and biological perspectives, Frank H.T. Rhodes concludes “A single species – ours - now has the capacity to influence or disrupt not only the natural rhythm, distribution and future patterns of life on Earth, but even its survival. In the billions of years on the planet that is a unique and sobering capacity.”

 

As far back as 1929, between the First and Second World Wars, the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, wrote at the end of his book Civilisation and its Discontents: “The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance in their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self destruction.... Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man.”

 

That is as true now as it was then.