text: Social failure? You're clearly ignoring history and ignorant of the church's role in society. The church, through Pope (now) St John Paul 2 (canonized 2014) was instrumental in bringing down communism. By example Pope Francis is leading a movement, for want of a better word, to make the church more socially inclusive, which has nothing to do with socialism, and is receiving a strong resistance from conservatives within the curia, incl an American cardinal associated with Trump's former advisor, Steve Bannon.
  The Catholic Church, of around 1.2bn people, is the largest group in the world today. How large, important and influential is yours? It lasted 2000 years during internal and external wars and schisms, many self-inflicted, and is growing in the non-western world. Thus, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a 'failure'. It's facing a crisis in its government because the old guard refuse to change, but they will come round.  Ask why did Marxism, apartheid, etc failed.