The Church's Response to the Bubonic Plague

The plague killed 42 to 45% of all the clergy in Europe during the 14th century. This has a permanent long-term effect on on the church in Rome. Regular people because there's suddenly less priests and nuns no one doing last rights feel like the church has abandoned them. The best data we have suggests that non-Catholic parts of the world suffered pretty similar death rates to the Catholic part of the world.