On April 17, The Times reported that "the Church is in disarray as the Pope marks five years at the helm".

This headline confirmed a prediction that I had made in a letter that I sent to a local newspaper in the late 1990s. Here is my letter:

"I have been following with great interest the crisis of the Catholic Church in Austria which came to a head with the exposure of the sex abuse scandal involving the former Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna.

"At the same time I have been reading a fascinating history of Austria between the years 1815 - 1914.

"Emperor Franz Josef's Austria was characterised by a culture of façades and a government in a state of denial. The whole edifice - Hapsburg monarchy and Austro-Hungarian Empire alike - came crushing down in the aftermath of the Great War.

"Like Franz Josef's Austria, Pope John Paul's Vatican is a bureaucracy of façades and his Church is in a state of denial.

"Like Franz Josef during the Ringstrasse era (1860-1890), John Paul is trying to distract his fold with show and spectacle: world tours that are forgotten as soon as they're over; unknown "saints" canonised as fast as he could make them; and the upcoming bash for the new millennium.

"Like Franz Josef, John Paul has swept under the carpet grave problems and issues which he is reluctant to face or unable to solve.

"Instead of addressing the concerns of Austrian Catholics, John Paul tried to appease them by offering them more 'saints'. It didn't work.

"Only 40,000 to 60,000 people, a tiny proportion of Vienna's population of 1.5 million, showed up for John Paul's Mass.

"And that poor showing was only boosted by the cancellation of all other Masses in the city's churches.

"After Emperor Franz Josef came the finis Austriae; after Pope John Paul, le deluge."