Pope Laments Priest Shortage but Warns Against Overreliance on Lay Volunteers

Pope John Paul II, addressing French Roman Catholics who often make sardonic jokes about “priestless Sundays,” Monday lamented the worldwide shortage of priests but sternly warned against relying too much on lay volunteers to fill the clerical void.

The pontiff’s lengthy and carefully written speech to more than 5,000 priests and seminarians, on the third day of his four-day visit to southeastern France, was seen by Vatican officials as certain to arouse controversy among Catholic lay people who have been pressing for greater leadership roles in both the spiritual and social realms of the church.

John Paul made it clear that despite church reforms of the past 20 years, he does not believe lay people can continue expanding their share of the spiritual tasks of ordained priests.

Role Rediscovered

“The reduced numbers of priests and priestly ordinations in many countries can lead some of the faithful, or even priests, to resign themselves to this shortage under the pretext that the role of the laity has been rediscovered and put into practice,” the Pope said.

But only priests “who are truly priests” can fulfill the role, he said. And to become resigned to their falling numbers, he went on, would be “a bad sign for the vitality of the Christian people; it would be perilous for (the church’s) future and its mission.”

One member of the Pope’s traveling entourage said that John Paul specifically chose the tiny village of Ars as the focal point of his French pilgrimage because he wanted to exhort priests everywhere to encourage more priestly vocations among Catholic youths by citing the example of priestly simplicity and humility for which the town is famous. In addition, Ars is only 20 miles from Lyon, one of the most active centers of Roman Catholic laicization.

Ars was the parish of the patron saint of priests, St. Jean-Marie Vianney, who died in 1859 after achieving fame for his pious attention to priestly basics and attracting thousands of pilgrims who wished to make their confessions to him. Vianney, known as the Cure of Ars, was said to have listened to confessions for up to 18 hours a day while still performing his other priestly duties.

Accompanied Revolution

The priests’ patron saint--the 200th anniversary of his birth coincided with the pontiff’s visit--lived in the time of anti-clericalism and growing secularism that accompanied the French Revolution.

Pointing to Vianney’s adoption of basic priestly values as his answer to the secularization of the time, John Paul called the saint a “peerless model” for today’s priests.

Although priestly vocations have risen slightly after declining sharply in the early 1980s, developed countries such as France still suffer severe shortages. The French church registered a nearly 30% drop in the number of its priests between 1965 and 1985, from 40,981 to 28,629.

While more than 1,000 priests were ordained each year four decades ago, only 116 were ordained in all of France last year. The Pope later celebrated Mass in a cow pasture, before a crowd of about 10,000 people. Security was again tight, as it has been for his other appearances in France. Spectators had to pass through metal detectors. Helicopters surveyed the area before the Mass began.