2023-07-20 16:52:02
BARCELONA (AP) — A recent mass held on a Saturday afternoon at the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia had all the hallmarks of a neighborhood church service, from prayers for sick and deceased members to name day congratulations for two parishioners in the pews. It was the day of San Juan.
But there were also security controls to enter and curious tourists who took photos of the faithful from above. The regular mass was held in the crypt of the temple, a masterpiece by the modernist architect Antoni Gaudí and one of the most visited monuments in Europe.
Europe’s most iconic holy sites have been struggling this summer with tourism already reaching or even surpassing pre-pandemic record levels. They try to find ways to accommodate both the faithful who come regularly to pray and the millions of visitors who often pay to see the art and architecture of the sites.
“We work to anticipate, so as not to reach this collapse,” explains Father Josep Maria Turull, rector of the Sagrada Familia and director of tourism, pilgrimages and sanctuaries for the archdiocese of Barcelona.
An increasingly popular strategy is to have visitors and worshipers go their separate ways: services are held in discreet locations, visitors are prohibited during times of worship, or the entrance lines are completely different.
This spring, for example, the Vatican opened a separate “percurso” (road) for those who want to enter to pray or attend Mass, so they won’t be put off by hours-long lines for the average 55,000 daily visitors, says Basilica spokeswoman Roberta Leone. The “course” begins outside of St. Peter’s Basilica.
However, the challenge remains for churches: how to balance the increase in tourism without sacrificing their spiritual purpose.
“It’s really hard because you also want (outside) people to experience your faith,” explains Daniel Olsen, a Brigham Young University professor who researches religious tourism. It is one of the largest segments of the tourism market, with some 330 million visitors to religious sites each year around the world.
The faithful, who often prefer to attend the more famous churches because they regularly have more services than normal parishes, expect free access while tourists often pay fees that are crucial for the upkeep of the sites.
“The temple should be a place for celebrations and not a theme park,” says Joan Albaiges after the mass in the crypt of the Sagrada Familia, which he has attended regularly for six decades.
Albaiges praised the decision made a few years ago to celebrate a multilingual Sunday mass at the main altar of the soaring, colorful basilica. However, there is such a demand for the 800 free tickets that several hundred people who usually queue don’t get in, says Father Turull.
Religious and secular leaders agree that visitors should learn the histories of the holy places. Many of those visitors are becoming less familiar with religious traditions in rapidly secularizing countries, where lesser-known churches are being emptied or repurposed for other purposes.
“Some people go to the cathedral and don’t find out that they are in a church,” says José Fernández Lago, rector of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. “It is a situation that has been created in nations that used to have a Christian majority and in which faith has now cooled down,” he adds.
The Cathedral of Santiago —full of masterpieces, from Romanesque sculpture to luxurious Baroque decoration— attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists and pilgrims who have traveled the routes of the Camino de Santiago since the Middle Ages to reach the tomb of the apostle.
In order to preserve its role as a church for pilgrims, Lago says, the cathedral does not charge entrance fees, limits visitor capacity and also does not require a dress code. On a hot early summer morning, a steady stream of pilgrims dodged each other’s selfie sticks in front of the jewel-encrusted statue of Santiago. Some wore tight cycling shorts or sweat-stained hiking shirts.
But visits are not allowed during the four daily masses that are celebrated at the main altar. Priests and security guards constantly ask visitors to lower their voices to allow regular worshipers to pray.
“It costs more and more… the attitude of the people changes, what was the education of the presence, was lost. You have to deal with it,” explains Juan Sexto, who in 10 years as a security worker at the cathedral has noticed a change in the behavior of many visitors.
As the crowd gathered before the always-packed noon mass for pilgrims, he used the main microphone to insistently call for silence. The silence lasted for about a minute, before the enthusiastic visitors resumed their chatter.
In the second bench there is someone who thinks the same as Sexto, the pilgrim Miguel Ángel Ariño. As he waited for mass to begin, he said the church was right to only allow the faithful in during times of worship, leaving the cathedral open for many hours for cultural visits.
“People need the transcendent… Leisure, rest and time with God are not incompatible,” adds Ariño.
However, they can become so without any strategy. The coexistence between faithful and tourists has been controversial in the now Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul. Built as an iconic cathedral in the Byzantine era, converted to a mosque after the conquest of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, and opened as a museum during the last century, it was converted back into a mosque in 2020 by the Islamic-oriented government of Turkey.
Now visitors can tour the structure for free outside of prayer hours. In the main section of the Hagia Sophia, where prayers are held, the large mosaics depicting Christian figures are hidden behind curtains, and most of the marble floor is covered with carpets.
“We as a family would like it to become a museum again,” says Ricardo Bravo, a tourist from Mexico who visited the monument with some relatives. “We would like… to see more things to learn more, appreciate Turkish culture more,” he adds.
In many of the most visited churches in Spain, the imbalance goes in the opposite direction. There were so many visitors to the huge Basílica del Pilar in Zaragoza on a Saturday in mid-June that it was overcrowded and it was almost impossible to hear the midday mass held in the small chapel where a statue of Our Lady of Pilar is venerated.
With some 2.5 million annual visitors, Barcelona Cathedral was also close to breaking point before its chapter reshuffled the balance between worship and guided tours in recent years.
“It was like being in the market,” recalls Anna Vilanova, the cathedral’s tourism manager. “We have had to bring order.”
The cathedral instituted a maximum number of visitors, required tour groups to use wireless audio guides to reduce noise and added staff to explain the new policies to visitors and those who came for daily mass or confession, which is held in a side chapel with glass doors to preserve silence.
“The time comes when tourism is so massive that it occupies the space of worship,” said Xavier Monjo, who is responsible for dissemination and tourism at the cathedral. “The cathedral is alive, it is not a museum,” he adds.
Visitor guides included in the admission fee seek to prioritize the church’s role as an active place of worship.
For example, the description of the nave in the list of “essential” begins by stating that “from its beginnings until today, this cathedral has been and is a space dedicated to prayer”, before describing its impressive Catalan Gothic architecture. The entrance to the roof terraces explains that this is where the blessing of the city takes place every May on the feast of the Holy Cross.
“As tourism has grown, it is an opportunity, not to proselytize, but to discover the deep meaning of what they can see,” says Turull. It is that “everyone who enters as a tourist can leave as a pilgrim, can have a spiritual experience,” he adds.
While 3.7 million tourists explored the dazzling architecture and fascinating stained glass windows of the Sagrada Família last year, Fénelon Méndez remains focused on the parish activity that happens literally under the basilica.
Originally from Venezuela, Mendez has lived in the neighborhood with his family for a decade and often serves as sacristan and altar boy. There are ministry programs for single mothers and migrants, as well as regular food distributions, he says.
The basilica provides a unique experience, so the faithful must continue to have full access to it, Méndez stresses. But the crypt where the regular faithful gather is the true nucleus where many like him feel at home.
“They take the basilica to New York, but we are here,” he emphasizes in the sacristy, long after the day’s tourists have stopped wandering upstairs.
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Associated Press writers Francisco Seco in Istanbul and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press’ religious coverage is supported through a partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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