The Pope urged young people to consider vocations
Will we see a considerable response?
Photo by Carolyn Cole/LA Times
The crowd of 25,000 Roman Catholics burst into cheers when Pope Benedict XVI took the stage for a youth rally during his U.S. visit last week. Chanting “Viva Papa!” they pressed against security barriers and reached out to touch him.
Many Catholics and church leaders were happily surprised by the outpouring of enthusiasm. Now, they hope the experience will draw some of the young revelers into the priesthood.
Ever since ecstatic throngs began greeting the globe-trotting Pope John Paul II, analysts have been looking for any direct link between a papal visit and seminary enrollment.
The Rev. Donald Cozzens, a former seminary rector and author of “The Changing Face of the Priesthood,” said there’s no way to know the exact impact of a papal pilgrimage. But he said Benedict’s warmth and grandfatherly presence could inspire many to at least consider ordination.
“There’s a certain mystery to a call to ministry in the priesthood,” said Cozzens, who teaches at John Carroll University in Ohio. “Some people know they are destined to be a priest from their childhood and other people discover this call much later in life. Sometimes it’s awakened by a papal visit.”
There’s almost no way this papal visit will not result in an increase in vocations, to use a double negative on the most positive thing that’s happened in the Church in a long time.
Current seminarians are the John Paul II generation, and they’re already on fire. Look at the wildly cheering young seminarians, priests and women religious at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York last weekend. If each of them influenced just one other person, who influenced one other person…
In San Antonio, Assumption Seminary, a bilingual school, is flourishing, with 94 seminarians from 16 dioceses and a 300 percent growth in vocations in the past four years.
Benedict’s visit “will definitely make a difference,” in attracting new priests, said the Rev. Arturo Cepeda, who teaches at Assumption. He downloaded Benedict’s comments to U.S. bishops about the priesthood and discussed them with his classes at the school the next morning.
That’s what will prompt an upturn in vocations.
“He provided a very positive, a very vibrant and very realistic view of the priesthood,” said Cepeda, director of vocations for the Archdiocese of San Antonio. “Most of the men here want to make a difference in the church, in the world and in society, and that takes sacrifice.”
That describes the priesthood perfectly. Fishers of Men.
If priests love being priests, they’re bound to influence others.