Florence, Italy, Jan 10, 2021 / 08:01 am (CNA).- The Archbishop of Florence has said no new students have entered his diocesan seminary this year, calling the low number of priestly vocations a “wound” in his episcopate.
Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, who has led the Archdiocese of Florence since 2008, said in 2009 he ordained seven men as priests for the diocese, while this year he will ordain one man, a member of the Neocatechumenal Way. In 2020 there were no ordinations.
“I consider it one of the biggest wounds of my episcopate,” Betori said in a video press conference last month. This “is a truly tragic situation.”
The 73-year-old cardinal said he believes the low number of men entering the seminary in his diocese is part of a larger vocational crisis that also includes the sacrament of marriage.
“The problem of the vocational crisis to the priesthood lies within a vocational crisis of the human person,” he stated.
The latest Statistical Yearbook of the Catholic Church, published in March 2020, indicated that the number of priests worldwide fell in 2018 to 414,065, with Europe registering the largest decrease, though Italy still has one of the higher concentrations of priests, at around one priest for every 1,500 Catholics.
Like most of Europe, Italy’s demographics have been affected by a 50-year decline in birth rate. An aging population means fewer young people, and according to national statistics, fewer young Italians than ever are choosing to marry.
According to Betori, a “provisional” culture has likely influenced young adults’ choice of a permanent state of life, such as marriage or priesthood.
“A life that wants many experiences cannot be a life that is consecrated to a finality, to a purpose. It is true for marriage, for the priesthood, for all the choices of people,” he said.
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New York City, N.Y., Mar 22, 2019 / 04:49 pm (CNA).- As participants in the UN Commission for Women’s annual gathering advocated for increased international access to abortion, side events hosted by the Vatican and other Catholic groups presented a pro-life perspective on women’s empowerment at the UN.
The ten-day international meeting in New York March 11-22 included debate as to whether this year’s final document will include “universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights,” as a part of the commission’s “agreed conclusions,” as it did last year.
The topic of the commission’s 63rd session this year is “access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.”
For some at the UN meeting, access to public services means access to abortion.
“It’s a crime to prevent a woman from having access to abortion,” said French Minister of Gender Marlene Schiappa at an event at the UN headquarters March 13.
Obianuju Ekeocha, president of Culture of Life Africa, said that her “head almost exploded” when she heard this.
She added that in her view, the UN Commission for Women’s annual gathering is “the heart of the pro-abortion movement.”
“The meetings that I have gone to … the people I have listened to speak right here at the United Nations, [for them] there is no room for compromise,” Ekeocha said in a video statement.
“They want abortion to be legal. They want it to be legal in every country in every situation,” she added.
Ekeocha said she attended a UN event in which an abortionist-midwife demonstrated how she trains other abortionists in developing countries. The UN event was entitled “All united for the right to abortion.”
During the week of the commission meeting, a screening of Ekeocha’s documentary, “Strings Attached,” was streamed at the Nigerian Mission to United Nations on March 12. The documentary uncovers “ideological colonization” of contraceptives and abortion into African countries and gives voice to African women who are suffering its effects.
Pro-life advocate Lila Rose spoke on the topic “Motherhood is a gift” at UN side event co-hosted by the Holy See Mission to the UN and C-Fam, entitled “Protecting Femininity and Human Dignity in Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality Policies Today.”
The Holy See Mission to the UN sponsored five side events addressing issues that affect women, from human trafficking to protections for women and girls with Down syndrome.
In conjunction with the Catholic Women’s Forum, the Holy See helped to organize an event on “Valuing Unpaid Work and Caregiving.”
Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations said at the event that there has been a presumption in the United Nations that “a person’s work outside the home is far more valuable than a person’s work inside the home.”
Auza questioned whether “a prioritization of a person’s work in the labor markets over care work at home flows from woman’s deepest desires or whether it’s an emulation of a flawed, hyper-masculine, way of looking at the world, one in which work, and what work can provide, is treated as the most important value.”
“No women who desires to give of her time in this way should be stigmatized by society or penalized in comparison to other women or to men. Work schedules should be continuously adapted so that if a woman wishes to work she can do so without relinquishing her family life or enduring chronic stress,” he said. “Rather than having her readjust everything to the rules of the marketplace, the marketplace itself should be adjusted to what society recognizes is the enormous personal and social value of her work.”
“Humanity owes its very survival to the gift of caregiving, most notably in motherhood, and this indispensable contribution should be esteemed as such, by both women and by men,” Auza said.
A view from in St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California. / Credit: St. Michael’s Abbey
CNA Staff, Jan 9, 2024 / 10:30 am (CNA).
An abbey in California launched a consulting and fundraising firm that its leaders say is helping “serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history.”
The Abbey Group was launched at St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California, in 2020 after the priests saw major success with a capital campaign to build a new monastery there.
The abbey, of the Norbertine order, launched the campaign in 2006 but it stalled after “a decade of fits and starts,” Gregory Clark, the strategic planning director of the Abbey Group, told CNA. The abbey’s leadership consequently assembled “a small, internal team of confreres to rethink the project,” hiring R. Shane Giblin in the process.
Within short order the abbey had secured over $150 million in commitments, more than doubling earlier projections of $60 million. The team also found “creative ways to immediately pay off all their bank debt in the same year it opened.”
St. Michael’s Abbey Father Prior Chrysostom Baer told CNA the project had transformed to the point that it was “no longer about what the abbey needed but rather the opportunity the benefactors had to do something of great consequence for themselves and the Church.”
“This not only fit with our calling as religious, but it was simply more effective,” Baer said.
The major success of that campaign led people to seek out both Giblin and the Norbertine Fathers “asking for strategic counsel on how to move forward with their own projects,” Clark said.
Giblin and the abbey’s Father Justin Ramos “began offering pro bono counsel for about 18 months until they saw there was a real need in the Church that wasn’t being met.” The Abbey Group was launched as a result.
‘Not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago’
St. Norbert established the Canons Regular of Prémontré in Prémontré, France, in 1121. The order’s task was in part to revitalize both clergy and lay faithful that had become dissolute in the faith at the time.
The Abbey Group “exists to help serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history — not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago,” Clark told CNA.
The initiative “provides strategic counsel and direction to faithful Catholic religious communities, educational institutions, and apostolates around the world,” Clark said, with a focus on institutions that have “ambitious apostolic endeavors and strong leadership but are in need of the financial and temporal resources to accomplish their objectives.”
The Abbey Group team has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy Catholic projects, though it does not engage in any formal marketing. The group intentionally eschews online marketing, avoiding the common business practice to “saturate the internet with messages” of self-promotion.
Giblin, now serving as CEO and co-founder of the Abbey Group, said this is intentional. “All of our clients come to us through unsolicited word of mouth,” he said. “So our reputation is all we have — if we don’t do good work we won’t exist — and we shouldn’t exist.”
The group has already developed “a queue of clients” — it takes on just four projects at any one time, vigorously vetting each proposal for its fidelity to the Catholic Church as well as the leadership guiding the project in question.
The majority of the staff are drawn from the laity, and the Norbertine Fathers offer “spiritual guidance” to the team and play a role in the governance of the organization.
Altogether the effort is directed toward “providing worthy Catholic projects with the strategy and resources they need to fulfill what God is calling them to accomplish,” Clark said.
Giblin said he was fortunate to have had “a front-row seat to see the way Father Abbot and Father Justin were able to work with a special group of people from all over the country to courageously support this unique project.”
“I saw people grow spiritually through this process and I realized this was just as much an opportunity for them as it was for the abbey,” he said. “It is an authentically Catholic approach to fundraising — one that is desperately needed in our Church during this moment in her history.”
Co-founder of the Abbey Group Father Ramos, meanwhile, said the endeavor’s work “is rooted inexorably in faith and charity, and in Christ.”
“We’re aiding in discernment,” Ramos said, “to allow generous souls to participate in the renewing of the Church.”
Why buy the cow, when the milk is free? That age old question in the continual cycle of life, in the rise and fall of every civilization.
Don’t take no rocket scientist to read Ab Chuput jabbing and ridiculing to be President Biden. That recognize anti-Catholic ways are from the top as Chuput driving away potential vocations, priests if anybody is..
No real family person would be or attempt today to be in politics, or religion, in those of bad or own self elevating ways will merely attack them..
That is proven by the martrydom of Kennedy, the good cant win…
God bless Mr. President Biden for trying, and we pray that God guides him.. That as a Catholic should have been ab Chuput only comment, rather than condemnation.
Perhaps Florence should reach out to the many African seminarians. Ive read additionally that numbers of young men in Africa wish to enter the seminary but economics won’t allow it.
I have heard critics of the Church many times sneer “Those old men at the Vatican banned contraception and want many children born so there will be priests” (and presumably monks and nuns).
.
Admittedly, there is something to that. If a region has a fertility rate of only 1.3 or so, there will not be children born to do any job, not just priest. Back in 1997, that rate was 1.22, so it has been many, many years Italy has lacked children.
Some bishops seem to be able to foster vocations. Some orders seem to be thriving. What are they doing right?
(Not sure if this is true in Europe. I see on Anglican Unscripted that (orthodox) Anglicans are setting up missions in Europe).
Why buy the cow, when the milk is free? That age old question in the continual cycle of life, in the rise and fall of every civilization.
Don’t take no rocket scientist to read Ab Chuput jabbing and ridiculing to be President Biden. That recognize anti-Catholic ways are from the top as Chuput driving away potential vocations, priests if anybody is..
No real family person would be or attempt today to be in politics, or religion, in those of bad or own self elevating ways will merely attack them..
That is proven by the martrydom of Kennedy, the good cant win…
God bless Mr. President Biden for trying, and we pray that God guides him.. That as a Catholic should have been ab Chuput only comment, rather than condemnation.
Dude, you are batting about .060. Might want to adjust your stance and grip.
That high? And you can actually figure out what he’s trying to say? Must be all those years of being an editor.
I read a lot of academic stuff, so I’ve learned to wade through repetitive, inane, and mostly incoherent writing.
Email address to the Archbishop and vocation director Catholic Archdiocese of Florentine
Perhaps Florence should reach out to the many African seminarians. Ive read additionally that numbers of young men in Africa wish to enter the seminary but economics won’t allow it.
I have heard critics of the Church many times sneer “Those old men at the Vatican banned contraception and want many children born so there will be priests” (and presumably monks and nuns).
.
Admittedly, there is something to that. If a region has a fertility rate of only 1.3 or so, there will not be children born to do any job, not just priest. Back in 1997, that rate was 1.22, so it has been many, many years Italy has lacked children.
Some bishops seem to be able to foster vocations. Some orders seem to be thriving. What are they doing right?
(Not sure if this is true in Europe. I see on Anglican Unscripted that (orthodox) Anglicans are setting up missions in Europe).
May the Lord of the harvest inspire and invite zealous laborers to toil in his vineyard.
How can I contact the vocation director if I’m inspired to join his diocese as a seminarian?
Greeting!
I am interested to join your diocese. How can i get the vocations director’s contact.
Greetings
If one is inspired to become a Priest in the Archdiocese of Florence, whow should he go about it?
Request to join your seminary
Good morning.
I am interested to join your diocese. How can get the vocations director’s contact