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Seminary enrolments in Australia and the United States are rising, in spite of the sex abuse and other scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church in recent years.
In Australia, the seminary intake has risen from about 235 a year in 2007 to 350 in 2012.
The rector of Holy Spirit Seminary in Queensland, Monsignor Tony Randazzo, says his seminary is busier than it has been for two decades.
“It’s indicative that young people are coming forward enthusiastically to give themselves for a life in service in the Church,” he said. “Young people have embraced the Gospel in a new kind of way.”
According to an ABC report, one suggestion is that World Youth Day in Sydney five years ago may have sparked more interest in the priesthood.
In the United States, the number of priests dropped from 58,632 in 1965 to a record low of 38,964 last year, but the number of seminarians has been increasing modestly over the past few years, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
American seminaries are at their fullest since the 1970s, said Father Roger Landry, chaplain of Catholic Voices.
“When the going gets tough, good Catholic young men begin to recognise how important it is to have good and holy priests,” Father Landry said. “Dioceses have done a good job in putting their best priests in vocations offices as the first point of contact.”
Father Shawn McKnight, executive director of the Secretariat for Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said seminarians are acutely aware of the challenges and judgments they are likely to face in contemporary society.
“Seminaries have gotten better at filtering the types of candidates that are strongly committed to assisting the Church,” he said. “The crucible of the scandal has molded our prospective seminarians. They are not expecting an easy life. They are not expecting to be applauded.”
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Image: LRTV
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