The Vatican has released a document providing guidelines and criteria for promoting and considering vocations to the priesthood. Carol Glatz , writing for CNS, says:
the Congregation for Catholic Education sought to address a widespread demand for pastoral guidelines for fostering vocations “based on clear and well-founded theology of vocation and of the identity of the ministerial priesthood”.
She goes on to point out:
During a Vatican news conference presenting the guidelines, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the education congregation, said that, paradoxically, “experience teaches us that the strongest candidates grow in hostile environments.”
In places where there is open hostility to the church, he said, vocations are “very healthy, very strong and (priests are) very aware that we have a mission.”
Msgr. Vincenzo Zani, undersecretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, said the aftermath of the sex abuse crisis in the United States has had some positive results, specifically in Boston, where the seminary is now filled thanks to an aggressive effort, led by the archbishop, to search for serious vocations.
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