There are hopes that Pope Francis’ arrival in Dublin next year will bring renewal of faith to lapsed young Catholics. Yet many worry that they may now be lost to the Church for good.

The buzzword in Irish pastoral circles these days is “renewal”. If you were to take Mass attendance as the criterion by which to measure the health of the Church in Ireland, anyone seeking to renew Irish Catholicism faces an uphill struggle. In 1990, 81 per cent of those identifying themselves as Catholics attended Mass at least weekly. This had fallen to 48 per cent in 2006 and, by 2011, weekly Mass attendances in the Dublin area had plummeted to 14 per cent.