Pope heads to a less Catholic Spain

MADRID — Pope Benedict XVI meets Spain's Facebook generation this weekend — setting up a clash of values and lifestyles in a once-staunchly Catholic nation that has become one of Europe's most liberal.

The visit is part of a major Vatican push to make increasingly secular Europe re-embrace its Christian roots, but the pope faces a big challenge in a nation that has undergone an extraordinary social transformation in just the past few years — with laws allowing gay marriage, fast-track divorce and easier abortions.

These changes are the latest, perhaps most dramatic, chapter in Spain's reinvention after the deeply conservative dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. After rigid social and political constraints came an explosion of hedonism and cultural vigor that caused the nation to stray further and further from its religious heritage.

It has all horrified the Vatican, which remembers a not-so-distant age when all public schoolrooms had a picture of Franco and a crucifix mounted on the wall. For many liberal Spaniards, on the other hand, it's the church's association with the Franco regime that has been a cause for much of the alienation.

"This is without a doubt the least Catholic Spain in history, and demographic data suggest it will continue to become less and less Catholic," sociologist Kerman Calvo said of the country hosting Pope Benedict Saturday for a two-day visit.

Indeed, church attendance is falling steadily and at Mass on Sunday most worshippers have gray hair. Congregations are fast losing young people. And civil ceremonies now outnumber church marriages for the first time.

Against that challenging backdrop, the pope's tour starts in Santiago de Compostela, a medieval and present-day pilgrimage site whose ornate cathedral is said to hold the remains of St. James the Apostle. It ends Sunday in Barcelona, where the pope will consecrate part of the Sagrada Familia, or Holy Family, church — Antoni Gaudi's unfinished architectural marvel.

Tensions rose even before the Pope arrived, as riot police swinging truncheons clashed Thursday night with anti-papal protesters in Santiago, some of whom carried red banners reading "I am not waiting for you."

In Barcelona, hundreds of people staged a peaceful nighttime rally against the visit, with banners decrying everything from the cost of hosting the pope to the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked the Vatican.

Thousands of gays and lesbians plan a kiss-in in Barcelona in the pope's presence as he leaves the grounds of the city's actual cathedral on Sunday morning, puckering up en masse to protest against the conservative pontiff, whose opposition to gay marriage is well known.