Pope Laments Worldwide Lack of Priests
Pope John Paul II kneeled before the coffin containing the remains of the patron saint of parish priests today and bemoaned the severe shortage of priests worldwide.
The Pope told 5,000 priests, seminarians and deacons from more than 60 countries that they should not be discouraged by the lack of young men becoming priests.
“Lay people and priests should never resign themselves to the reduced number of priestly vocations and ordinations, as is the case today in many dioceses,” he said.
The number of Roman Catholic priests worldwide bottomed out in the early 1980s and is now slowly inching upward but not enough to keep pace with the growing number of Catholics.
The problem is particularly distressing in France, which has one of the lowest ordination rates in the world. The number of priests in France has dropped nearly 30% in the last 20 years, from 40,981 in 1965 to 28,629 last year.
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