CV NEWS FEED // Ireland’s vocational crisis is on full display, as recent reports reveal that Dubin’s Catholic seminary has just one student.
According to a report from The Times, the vocations director for the Archdiocese of Dublin, Fr Séamus McEntee, confirmed the disquieting number, stating: “In September, we will have another man coming in… I wish there were more.”
Fr McEntee told The Times that he was “in conversations with other men” about their discernment of the priesthood, adding that he hoped they might come forward in the next few years and submit an application to the seminary.
“I have to discern with them for up to two years before I judge them fit to apply even,” Fr McEntry explained. “Then they go forward for panel interview and different assessments and so forth before they go into propaedeutic [preparatory study] year in Valladolid in Spain.”
The news comes amid the country’s largest Church restructuring in roughly 900 years, as CatholicVote previously reported. The country’s six dioceses are consolidating into three.
Combined with the declining number of Ireland’s practicing Catholics, priest shortages across the country contributed to the Apostolic Nunciature in Ireland’s decision to consolidate.
In December 2023, the Diocese of Clogher, which has just 44 priests ministering across its 85 churches, authorized lay people to act as funeral ministers, as CatholicVote reported.
