AUSTRALIA will have to deal with a shortage of priests for at least another 30 years, says a Melbourne priest who has studied the nation’s ordination trends over the past seven decades.
Balwyn North parish priest, Fr Eric Hodgens, who was director of pastoral formation in Melbourne archdiocese for seven years, has released the findings of his research in a paper called ‘Seminary Facts, Factors and Futures’.
‘Present ordination rates will result in only one priest for 13,000 Catholics in Victoria and Queensland and one per 22,000 in NSW,’ Fr Hodgens said.
He said that with the average parish having about 3500 Catholics, such trends would make it necessary to re-organise the way parishes are run.
Fr Hodgens said the ordination rate – the number of priests being ordained compared to the total Catholic population – has been steady since the early 1990s.
A continuation of the shortage of priests is unavoidable ‘unless we bring in jumbo loads of priests from overseas’, Fr Hodgens said.
He said that was not going to happen because other countries also had shortages, and there was no way that priests from foreign countries could be brought in the numbers required by the Australian Church.
Executive officer of the National Commission for Clergy Life and Ministry (NCCLM), Fr Peter Brock, said the shortage of priests was clearly presenting a challenge for the Church in Australia ‘and that challenge is going to increase in coming years’.
Fr Brock said dioceses were responding in various ways, including bringing priests from overseas, introducing the permanent diaconate and introducing formal training programs in lay pastoral ministry.
He said there were arguments for and against bringing priests from overseas, and sometimes it proved successful and sometimes not.
The NCCLM is working with the National Council of Priests and the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Migrants and Refugees preparing the ground for dioceses wanting to bring priests from overseas.
