Far from being the oasis of vocations that some Westerners assume the Philippines to be, it actually has one of the worst priest shortages (calculated on a priest-to-people ratio) in the whole world, even worse than that of any Western European country, including the Netherlands. The seminaries in my country are full, but we ordain only half as many priests as the United States does every year because the great majority of Philippine seminarians drop out.
According to the catholic-hierarchy.org website, the Philippines, the third largest Catholic country in the whole world, has only 7,335 priests to serve 69,630,000 Filipino Catholics. That boils down to one priest per 9,000+ people. Even when it comes to the College of Cardinals, we are the most under-represented in it among the world's ten largest Catholic nations.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Vocations in the Philippines
I read this interesting note on the vocation situation in the Philippines on ZENIT today. A reminder that the vocations crises is not limited to the Western Church.
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2 comments:
It has been our perennial situation even in colonial times. When the Spaniards left, the vast majority of the religious orders left with them-- the few native priests who were left behind either joined the Philippine Idependent church (though many later repudiated their membership in that schismatic 'church'), or were already aging.
In more recent years, poverty has been our worst vocations killer; many priests, many of them very promising, are enticed by the promise of a better life in the United States, and so, move there. I've known a lot of very holy priests who have left the country for greener pastures abroad, and it is really such a sad story. Formation also has to do with this problem, as many priests here suffer from very poor formation; it is still common for some priests in the province to keep mistresses, sometimes even several at a time.
I am also puzzled at the very small number of cardinals that we have. We are slowly catching up with Brazil and Mexico in terms of sheer numbers of Catholics yet we are grossly under-represented. I think we Filipinos need to start rebuilding the Church in our own country first; sadly, the CBCP (local bishops' conference) is more interested in doing politics than remedying this sad, sad, situation.
Fr. Charles Ledderer, The Dakotas, USA you are impersonating a Catholic priest. Your identity is fictitious. There are people on here that are believing you. I am asking you not to trick people anymore.
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