Connect/Eddie Holt: On Thursday, Karol Wojtyla celebrated the 25th anniversary of his election as the 264th Pope. He is 83, suffering from Parkinson's disease and nearing death. His Papacy has been controversial, marked by activism and doctrinal dogmatism.
Now, as he prepares to pass from this world, organised Christianity may be passing from western Europe too. Christianity is slipping away because it's not only Catholicism which appears to be passing. The Church of England, long in decline in its homeland, is also facing renewed crisis. Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, faces well-funded "evangelical" enemies determined to prevent homosexual clerics being ordained within the Anglican Church.
Thus, Catholic conservatism and Anglican liberalism at the top of these Christian faiths are dividing adherents. The Pope's teaching on birth control has alienated a majority of Catholics in western Europe and North America. Conversely, the Archbishop of Canterbury's liberal stance on homosexual clerics has alienated Anglicans, especially those beyond the wealthy western world.
Both Churches are reeling from combinations of sexual morality and Europe's imperial past. Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia, colonised by continental European countries or the British Empire, are now - in numbers and fervour, if not yet in leadership - the crucial centres of Christianity. Former colonies will principally determine Christianity's future.
Certainly, Pope John Paul II seems increasingly bored by western Europe. To him, it is populated by bourgeois materialists and, as a result, he focuses on the Catholicised Third World. He sees, in Africa and Latin America, continents of peasant vigour in which the next world counts as much as this one. It is, after all, easier to sell salvation to those who are yearning for it.
Like the Pope, African Anglicans are rejecting secular Europe. As far as they are concerned, contemporary British attitudes to homosexuality are hindering their work as Christians in Africa. Seeing Nigerian Anglicans interviewed this week, their contempt for homosexuality was so visceral that the issue appeared beyond discussion.
"How can you use a man like a woman?" asked one incensed Nigerian man. (The use of "use" was telling but his argument was nonetheless clear so long as you were prepared to overlook the possibility that his ambiguous question referred to the "use" of men by women. Then again, in the male-dominated Third World, such a consideration would usually seem preposterous.) Anyway, the difficulties facing Christianity in western Europe and parts of North America can be viewed as inevitable by-products of religious globalisation. Ironically, the Pope has often preached against capitalist globalisation, arguing for the rights of workers to organise political bodies such as trade unions.
He has also opposed George Bush and Tony Blair over their attack on Iraq. There is, of course, a moral question - the Catholic Church's idea of a "just war" - at the heart of this matter. But the Pope's opposition is something more than condemnation of First World bullies attacking a Third World country. The attacked country is, after all, a Muslim one.
The Pope has met Muslims more than 50 times since he was elected. Commentators claim that this number surpasses the total number of encounters between Muslims and all previous Popes combined. In the 1980s and 1990s poor Catholic and Islamic nations regularly made common cause at United Nations-sponsored conferences on population.
Both religions opposed wealthy western nations and many women's groups on birth control and abortion. Back in 1985, the Pope referred to Catholics and Muslims as "brothers and sisters in the faith of Abraham". To this Pope, Islam - despite its demonisation in the wealthy world since September 11th, 2001 - is a lesser foe than the secular world.
So, within Catholicism and Anglicanism, we see the rejection of contemporary liberal European values and the elevation of religious ones adhered to by the devout of the Third World. In Catholicism's case, momentum comes from above; within Anglicanism, from below. But the results are similar, further diluting Christianity in its traditional homelands.
It is possible that we may soon see white smoke for a black pope. The Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze could replace the Polish John Paul II. Were this to occur, Africa could assert with conviction that it had displaced Europe as the centre of world Catholicism. Even though it already has, the symbolic power of the papacy would validate the fact.
Meanwhile, Ireland, uniquely colonised by both Rome and London, will continue to secularise. The most potent issues causing Christianity to pass from Europe are highly charged sexual ones. Continuing clerical sex scandals leave the Catholic Church here needing a miracle to rehabilitate itself, while effete Anglicanism has hardly a prayer.
The problem for western Europe is how to replace Christianity. Jesus said nothing about gays but he vehemently condemned usury. Western Europe's standard of living, like North America's, depends significantly on usury.
When Third World passions over sex abate, Christians there may see the really grievous wrongs done to them by the wealthy world.