The church is dealing with a generation that communicates with symbols and not through concepts discourse and agendas

“The church is dealing with a generation that communicates with symbols and not through concepts, discourse and agendas.”The Pope’s appearance in the Alps this summer, when he was seen wearing “Serengeti” sunglasses, a baseball cap and a Cartier watch, is unlikely to persuade World Youth Day participants of any new-found ability to communicate with the younger generation.For many young Germans, the Pope remains the prime advocate of deeply unfashionable Catholic orthodoxy. Yet, as the bodies of the 121 victims are gathered from a mountainside north-east of Athens, investigators are struggling to explain what caused the accident. “In the east German city of Magdeburg, only 8 per cent of the new-born are baptised,” it added.Young Germans are likely to be in a minority at World Youth Day with most attendees from the Catholic heartlands of Spain, Italy and France.”For most young people, a Nike sport shoe says more about a person than membership of the church,” said Matthias Sellmann, a specialist in Catholic ethics. Hundreds of Catholic, and Protestant, churches have been turned into shops, pubs and cinemas in attempts to find worthwhile uses for the buildings.The dilemma has worsened since reunification and the addition to the population of some 17 million Communist-educated and largely agnostic or atheist former East Germans.”This country trains more orthopaedic shoe manufacturers and horse grooms than Catholic priests,” said Der Spiegel. The Pope’s homecoming to an un-Christian country.”The magazine also published a poll in which Germans were asked to name whom they most trusted. The police topped the list, followed by Aldi, the country’s largest cut-price supermarket chain, and, only then, the Pope. Among non-believing Germans, only 18 per cent said that they trusted the Pope.Some of the difficulty stems from the reputation Benedict earned in Germany prior to his election.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratz-inger, he was known as a severe enforcer of Catholic orthodoxy – at odds with modern Germans and their acceptance of birth control, homosexuality and sex outside marriage.The other problem is a steady decline in the number of people attending mass. On Thursday, the Pope, 78, will arrive in the Rhineland city of Cologne to attend World Youth Day, a large and meticulously organised Catholic festival which is expected to attract more than half a million mainly young people from Germany and abroad.
The visit will be the German Pontiff’s first foreign trip since he was elected in April. In an interview with Vatican Radio yesterday he said he hoped his appearance would “spark a wave of new faith among young people”.However, much of Germany’s media poured cold water on the Pope’s aspirations. Der Spiegel devoted its front cover to the visit and carried the headline: “Believers – desperately sought. Pope Benedict XVI’s return to his German homeland later this week has been billed as a visit to a godless country in which more people trust the police and the nation’s largest supermarket chain than the head of the Roman Catholic Church. It was supposed to ensure that Russia would never again find itself powerless in the face of a submarine accident..

Russia had its own underwater robot, nicknamed Venom, but this could not be used, for reasons that at the time were unclear.Russia’s naval chief of staff, Admiral Vladimir Masorin, has now admitted that the Russian rescue team tried to deploy Venom at the accident site, “but when they started to use it, they used it incorrectly – it was damaged by our people”.Prosecutors allege that the Venom’s breakdown meant the rescue operation cost an additional 10 million roubles (£195,000). A criminal case has now been opened by military prosecutors against the naval captain. He commanded the Georgy Kozmin, which was one of 10 ships dispatched by Russia’s Pacific Fleet to try to save the submersible.Prosecutors claimed he was guilty of gross negligence. “During the rescue operation the captain’s unprofessional actions damaged expensive equipment – the underwater Venom vehicle,” they said in a statement.The Venom’s incapacity was particularly galling for Russia since it had been purchased after the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000 in which 118 sailors died.

It was trapped for 76 hours and the seven sailors reportedly wrote farewell notes in the expectation they would die.A Royal Navy team used an underwater robot to cut the submarine free. They may not appreciate it, and some of them may not even realise it until the next time a mass rescue makes the news, but thanks to Renaud & co, they’ve lived to bathe, board, burn, and bicker another day.. A Russian naval captain has been accused of scuppering Moscow’s attempts to rescue seven sailors trapped in a mini-submarine for 76 hours through incompetence and negligence. The purported bungling of the captain, who has not been named, meant that Russia had to turn to Britain for help, which was difficult to accept for the still proud but enfeebled Russian military.
The AS-28 Priz submersible was saved on 7 August after becoming snagged on fishing nets and an underwater surveillance system in waters off Russia’s Far East.