Shanghai Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian and Fengxiang Bishop Luke Li Jingfeng have, in separate pastoral letters, called on Chinese priests and seminarians to strengthen their vocations through prayer during this special Year for Priests. Jesuit Bishop Jin 93, called for greater efforts to promote priestly vocations while Bishop Li, 87, urged his priests to enhance their spiritual life, UCA News reports.
In his letter dated Aug. 4, feast day of Saint John Mary Vianney, patron of parish priests, Bishop Jin urged his 78 priests and 150,000 lay Catholics to strengthen their prayer lives and pray for more priestly vocations.
Bishop Jin pointed out that the greatest difficulty Sheshan Regional Seminary in Shanghai faces is the decreasing number of seminarians. The seminary, which opened in 1982, now has 60 seminarians who come from the municipality and six dioceses in eastern China. Enrolment is merely one-third of its peak in the early 1990s and “the downward trend seems irreversible,” the prelate wrote.
He said parish priests should try their best to nurture vocations, as parents today only care about their children’s grades, rather than educating them to be good citizens and good Catholics.
Bishop Jin admitted that persevering in the priestly vocation is difficult in today’s society and so “we must rely on our spiritual life and strong will.” Living a consecrated life “is like rowing upstream, not to advance is to fall back,” he said.
Eleven priests in Shanghai diocese were laicized in the past two decades, Bishop Jin noted.
He noted that these priests performed well during their seminary days, but after being exposed to society and its values, they succumbed to power, money and got involved in inappropriate relationships with women.
“I haven’t forgotten to pray for them,” Bishop Jin said.
Meanwhile, Bishop Li in Shaanxi province, in his June pastoral letter, encouraged his 36 priests to spend half an hour reading the Bible, other spiritual books, and studying Church documents, theology and Latin. Bishop Li will test them on these topics at the end of the Year for Priests.
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