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Poverty, secularism seen as reasons for dearth of vocation in Asia
MANILA, August 15, 2009—Is there a Catholic clergy shortage in Asia? Yes and no.
The answer, said officials of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, often depend on where you worship.
Some churches, especially, those where Catholicism is a small minority, struggle to fill the pews. For the Catholic Church in Pakistan, the second largest Muslim population in the world, poverty foils young men to enter the seminary.
Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha, president of Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference, in fact said the number of girls joining the convents exceed the boys entering seminaries.
“Because of the economic crisis and food problem it’s difficult to make ends meet... so it’s difficult to have a vocation,” Archbishop Saldanha said.
Dwindling vocation in Pakistan, he said, is also because parents find it hard and “a big sacrifice to give up their sons” to enter the priesthood.
Same situation mirrors the problem confronting the Catholic Church in India fuelled by growing secularization there.
“The number of vocations is going down. The Christian families have less children and the reason is secularization of the society,” said Cardinal Oswald Gracias.
In Hong Kong, the church noted a “flourishing” number of vocations but still, he added, the increase is still far from the ideal.
In 2008, Bishop Tong said there are only 10 seminarians in their country but after the summer it improved to 15.
Bishop Tong said like India, his country is having difficulty recruiting seminarians because of the “secularization of materialistic tendencies.”
In the Philippines, the only Catholic-dominated country in Asia, the number of Catholics continues to increase but the number of new priests does not keep pace.
But Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, FABC’s secretary general, said dwindling vocations is not that a major issue.
To date, the Philippines have 8,000 priests with a ratio of 1 [priest] to 12,000 parishioners. (CBCPNews)
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