Noemi Araiza Santoyo 385531

Angela Roseli Gasca Torres - 385533

Non Profit Marketing
J-P Baeyens
_______________________________________________
The case of the Catholic Church in Europe

CONTEXT
The catholic Church in Europe is experiencing a number of challenges to be
solved urgently. Among them:
-

A decrease in day to day religious practice, a much slower frequentation of

churches and weekly offices - except for key life events (birth, marriage,
burials,...)

An increasing difficulty in recruiting new priests

A huge problem of image and reputation (sexual abuses of priests, bad

perception of pope and vatican authorities

Generally speaking, a growing trend of rejection of traditional bodies in the

society (justice, school, church, etc...)

It should however be noted a growing attraction for new forms of spirituality,

meaning that there are still needs to answer philosophical and metaphysical
questions.
Taking this context into account as well as information and data gathered
on the web, please consider the following questions:

QUESTION 1
Can the catholic Church problems be considered as marketing issues ? Why ?
More specifically, can you isolate the 3 major marketing problems to be solved in
this case ?
The Catholic Church problems can be considered as marketing issues because it is
all about the image that the society has on the religion. The problems that we
consider can be solved with marketing are the decrease in day to day religious
practice and slower frequentation of churches and weekely offices and an
increasing difficulty in recruiting new priests. This occurs because the church has
an old- fashioned mentality and really backward to society of our times.
If a few people make mistakes in the church as in the case of sexual abuses of
priests does not mean you should condemn the entire congregation, with the help
of marketing, everything can be made more transparent and show the society that
they can still believe in religion and church.
QUESTION 2
If you were a marketing consultant to the catholic Church, how would you go about
solving the problems you indentified. What is the methodology you recommend
before getting into solutions.
In my home city in Mexico you can find a church named San Felipe Neri, this
congregation found the key for people to came to the church every Sunday and to
the main events. They are always full because they combine the catholic songs with
electronic music, ligths and technology. They also talk in modern terms. For
example, the priest compared the bibile with the internet, it was so interesting and
a really easy way to understand the message he wants to give us.
At this point and with the damage Catholic Church already had is necessary to draw
the attention of society in an unconventional way as the case of The Roman
Catholic Church, they has decided to use beer mats and posters as part of a
campaign on the London Underground to promote the priesthood.
(NEWS, 2005)

As Human Beings the society as the priest, we all can make mistakes, although it is
a really bad situation the cases of sexual abuses. We think this problem is
responsability of the vatican authorities and they have to do something about it
really quick. But in the other hand we think they need to show the people all the
good things they do like hospitals, schools, charity, etc. And show the people that
we can still believe in something and the chatolic church is still a forward image.

Metodology
1. First we need to know the society we are going to focus, because the sense
of religion for the europeans its a little bit different from the americans.
2. Then the research of the people wants in the religin its very important
because it has to be very atracctive to them.
3. Find the best solution for solve the problem
4. Apply and get results

5. If you dont get a possitive answer keep innovating until you get the results
you want.

QUESTION 3
Do you consider that using marketing at the service of a religious organization is
raising ethical issues ?
If yes: why ? If no: why ?
We dont think that the Marketing in the religious organization has ethical issues. As
Fernando Torres mention in his article Ethics in marketing we can use it in the all
the cases we want but based in some ethic principles like veracity, all information is
true and only with informative purposes, Responsability, to assume and take
charge of their own actions and omissions in the performance of assigned duties
and Transparency, free access for all parties to information on sensitive issues.
(Torres. F, 2006). With the correct use of marketing the catholic church could change
their image in the minds of the society.

Bibliography
(NEWS, 2005) Beer mat adds to recruit priest BBC News, taken
from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4590019.stm on feb 15, 2013
(Torres. F, 2006) Cuestiones ticas en el Marketing University of
Buenos Aires (UBA). taken from
http://www.econ.uba.ar/www/servicios/Biblioteca/bibliotecadigital/instituto
s/cics/a1n1/cap4.pdf on feb 15, 2013