Thousands of Spaniards flocked to central Madrid yesterday to kiss the feet of a 17th-century wooden image of Christ, but despite this display of religious devotion the Catholic church is struggling to remain relevant to the youth in Socialist-governed Spain."There have been miracles," declared José Luis Fouce Loro, a 60-year-old civil servant and church volunteer who was marshalling the crowds. He said numbers often reached 500,000 during the annual ritual at the basilica of the Christ of Medinaceli.
He added that his mother's prayer to the Christ had been answered when he was ill with meningitis at the age of seven. "And here I am."
Angela Vallejo, a 51-year-old secretary who lost her job a month ago to the deepening economic crisis, took turns camping on the street corner for seven cold days in order to be near the head of the queue to kiss the prized left foot of the Christ in the first minutes of yesterday.
However, Ms Vallejo admitted that all was not well with Christianity in modern Spain. Young people concerned about Aids ignored the church's ban on contraceptives and few young men wanted to become priests or monks.
"Ninety per cent of the people waiting in the line are women, and most of them are older," she observed.
The extraordinary story of the image, reputed to grant one of the three prayers made by each supplicant, reflects some of the more dramatic moments of Spanish history itself.
Carved in Seville, it was said to have been sent to Spanish soldiers in what is now Morocco, captured by a Moorish king, thrown to the lions as if it were a living Christian, ransomed for its weight in gold, and then patronised by the dukes of Medinaceli.
The image was later seized by the (anti-religious) Republicans during the Spanish civil war of the 1930s and ended up in Geneva, from where it was returned after the dictator Francisco Franco's victory in 1939.
Spain's Roman Catholic church hierarchy supported Franco, and after his death in 1975 anti-clericalism and liberalism flourished, culminating in the Pedro Almodóvar film Dark Habits , featuring a cocaine-snorting abb-ess with lesbian tendencies.
In recent months, Spanish Catholics have campaigned against the plans of the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, including a revised abortion law and the teaching of "citizenship" in schools, which conservatives say undermines family values.
"This is a church which is clearly in retreat and defin-itely trying to regain some of its social influence," says Charles Powell, history professor at San Pablo CEU University.
Ms Vallejo, who has kissed the image of Christ every year for the past 42 years, reluctantly agrees as she surveys the queue of mostly elderly women.
"When the old people go, I don't know what will happen," she says.
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(Source: FT.com)