I refer to John Guillaumier’s letter ‘The decline of faith’.

His tirade was an extension of Ramon Casha’s promotion and adulation of the Malta Humanist Association – ‘Growing beyond religion’ (April 15) – after a heartfelt description of the decline of faith in Malta, only with more details of the European saga.

So what? Even I had a dig at the local Church’s waning influence. What with the empty pews and white-haired congregants in churches that were built for the thousands.

But this is happening only in Europe and locally. Elsewhere, the world is witnessing a multitude of religious conversions.

So Guillaumier’s exercise is futile because we both agree that ‘the triumph of faith’ (the name of the book) is no longer true in contemporary Europe. But I don’t like unfinished symphonies, and would listen to the finale.

Truly enough, this book emphatically and compellingly declares that the world is more religious than ever before while atheism remained static.

Catholicism is growing much faster than any other religion, particularly in Latin America.

In China, despite the disapproval of the communist regime, Catholic conversions are on the increase, the number of Catholics estimated at about100 million, while membership of the Communist Party stands at 85 million. It is predicted that, in a few decades, China will be the largest Christian country in the world.

Brazil boasted 80 million Catholics in 1950; now there are 123 million.

African countries totalled 45 million in 1970; in 2012 they stood at 176 million.

Asia has 12 per cent of the total Catholic population in the world.

Need I furnish more statistics?

Despite the atheists’ lashing out at religion, with erroneous gusto, little do they realise that although the era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetime, the day of eastern and southern Christianity is actually dawning.

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