Church Launches Priesthood Recruitment Drive

|PIC1|The Catholic Church in the west of England has launched a recruitment drive in a bid to boost the numbers entering into the priesthood.

A series of promotional posters and other material will accompany the recruitment campaign featuring a young 25-year-old Bristol man who is being ordained as a priest this year, TheGoodNews reports.

The campaign will be overseen by Fr Robert King, vocations director for the Clifton Diocese, and will also feature material that describes life in the priesthood as “real active service”.

"The posters and leaflets, by graphic designer and local parishioner Catherine Roperto, reflect the stages of a man pondering and considering a vocation through to the brightness of his eyes as he offers himself for service as a priest,” said Fr King.

|TOP|"They feature Rev James Finan, who will be ordained a priest for the Clifton Diocese."

He added: "Priests are called to be heroic in their real active service of the gospel, and the priesthood deserves the best possible promotion that we can give it."

The promotional material has already gone out to parishes and schools across the Clifton Diocese – which covers Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset and Bristol.

The new campaign comes as the Catholic Church in the UK looks increasingly abroad to countries like Poland for priests to fill up its shortfall.

It is not an unfamiliar sight these days to see many Polish priests approached at events with requests from their counterparts from outside of Poland to come and make up for the shortfalls in their own churches or seminaries.

The new role of Poland as the priestly breadbasket for Europe has also been noticed by Pope Benedict at the Vatican.

He told the seminaries: "Encourage your priests to do their missionary service or pastoral work in countries where clergy are scarce. It seems that today this is a special task and, in a certain sense, also a duty of the Church in Poland.”