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LONDON — The splendid ceremony at the Vatican on Saturday at which Pope Benedict XVI created 22 new members of the College of Cardinals did not have the resonance here it might once have had.

Christianity, in general, is in long-term decline in Europe and religious leaders have been on the defensive recently over what they perceive as the Continent’s increasing secularization.

The latest raw numbers suggest that around three-quarters of Europeans are nominally Christians. But the same research, from the Pew Research Center in December, acknowledges that even in traditionally devout nations, those percentages are in decline.

Secularists might suggest that the churches have only themselves to blame. The Catholic Church, in particular, has been riven by revelations about decades of priestly child abuse. That has contributed to a precipitous decline in religious observance in such fiercely Catholic countries as Ireland.

And the Vatican itself, as my colleague Elisabetta Poveledo writes, is currently the focus of lurid allegations of corruption, fraud, and even a murder plot, that are worthy of a Dan Brown novel.

Some church leaders claim Christianity in Europe has been targeted by a new, vociferous generation of secularizers. A recent court ruling in favor of Britain’s National Secular Society to ban prayers at meetings of a local municipal council provoked outrage from religious leaders. (The government said on Friday it was effectively reversing the ban.)

Even some secularists have expressed sympathy with believers as they confront the activism of proselytizing atheists such as Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist, whose campaigns against religion share all the crusading zeal of the Church Militant.

Alain de Botton, the Swiss-born philosopher and non-believer, has suggested atheists should take a more sympathetic view of religions for the moral values that they impart.

The debate over secularization has crossed the religious divide, with Europe’s Muslims also lamenting the perceived assaults on the faithful.

Baroness Sayeeda Hussain Warsi, Muslim chairwoman of Britain’s Conservative Party and a government minister, was greeted by Pope Benedict this week on an official visit to the Vatican.

To mark the event, she wrote an article in The Telegraph, saying, “My fear today is that a militant secularization is taking hold of our societies” and lamenting the fact that “faith has been neglected, undermined — and yes, even attacked — by governments in recent years.”

Referring to the message she would be taking to Rome, she said: “I will be arguing for Europe to become more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity.”