POLAND
The Tablet
November 12, 2019
by Jonathan Luxmoore
Poland has seen a 60 per cent drop in priestly recruits in the past two decades.
Poland’s Primate has said that the paedophile scandal in the Catholic Church has contributed to a drastic fall in priestly vocations, which have plummeted by a fifth this year, according to newly published Church data.
“Of course, demography has an important part in these falling numbers, but it most certainly isn’t the only cause”, Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno told the Catholic Information Agency (KAI). “I’d also pose questions about the faith life of contemporary young people, and about our witness to faith in the Church and the world – about testimony within our families, and about our capacity and determination to resolve difficult and shameful issues in our Church life”.
The 54-year-old was speaking after November figures from Poland’s Church Statistics Institute showed 498 ordinands had begun training this year at the country’s 83 Catholic seminaries, 20 percent fewer than in 2018, confirming a 60 per cent drop in priestly recruits in the past two decades.
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