ABSTRACT
The growing presence of migrants from Christian/Catholic (CC) European countries seems to bring to Europe old ways of practising religion as well as reinforcing religious values in a scenario of secularization or, as Davie said, of “believing without belonging” (1994). The increasing number of first generations of immigrants and their decision to live permanently in the host societies reveals how important religion is among immigrants as well as how strong ethnic chaplaincies and churches are, in contrast with what Rath et al. say (2001). The idea that migrants would interiorize the same secular model that has invested Europe (Berger et al., 2008; Asad, 2003; Modood, 2010) in a kind of religious assimilation has been refused. Religiousness and ethnic churches are both alive among immigrants. Of course, they don’t play a merely religious role, but are also pre-eminent figures in offering welcoming services as well as a kind of welfare system for both first arrivals and illegal immigrants. On the other hand, immigrants feel at home in places of worship where they find priests speaking their home language, who share (or understand) the same ethnic background, and recognize the difficulties emerging from mixing their old way of life and the requests of the new society.
