A total of 21 new seminarians have started studying to become priests for Irish dioceses this year, bringing to 74 the total of men training for the priesthood for the Catholic Church in Ireland.
It is a rise from the 15 who began training last academic year, and Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan, chair of the Bishops’ Council for Vocations, said it was “really heartening” that the 21 men had started the journey towards priesthood.
They are pursuing what the Church calls the ‘propaedeutic stage’, which involves a year of training in seminaries other than Maynooth. The new Irish students are undertaking formation at Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Dundalk, Co Louth; the Royal Scots College in Salamanca and the Royal English College in Valladolid, both in Spain; and the International Seminary of Ars in France.
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“God is still calling men to priesthood,” insisted Bishop Cullinan, who said the new seminarians were an answer to prayer and a special focus by the Church on promoting vocations. All around the country people prayed that the call to priesthood would be heard,” he said.
“Thanks to efforts in parishes, and via traditional media as well as on social, the vocation of priesthood was discussed in family settings, parishes and in communities.”
The modest rise in new seminarians is understandably being welcomed by Catholic bishops but will do little to stem the clergy crisis being felt across Irish dioceses.
The Church can point to glimmers of hope - the Diocese of Clogher is celebrating its first new entrant to the priesthood in six years, for example - but the pressure on priests remains acute; in Belfast, St Patrick’s on Donegall Street is down to just one priest for the first time in two centuries. St Patrick’s College at Maynooth, built to train 500 students, has only around 20 seminarians.
Priests from elsewhere, including Africa, are taking up roles in Irish dioceses; Ireland, which once exported priests to mission fields around the world, is now bolstering its numbers with men from some of those countries.
“We are all well aware that we need many more to respond,” said Bishop Cullinan, with some understatement.
Father Willie Purcell, the Irish Church’s national diocesan vocations coordinator, said that the fact that 21 men were starting their studies “demonstrates to the world that God never ceases to call men to diocesan priesthood”.
“While today’s number is good news, I pray that vocations to the priesthood will continue in the coming years,” he said.
“The Church and the faithful need priests.”
