DESPITE worldwide scandals, Pope Benedict XVI's year for priests ends on Friday on a strong note in Australia with a wave of new priests and students not seen for decades. On Friday evening, Cardinal George Pell will ordain six priests at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney - the biggest number since 1983. They will be joined in parishes by three others.
The trend, which the rector of Melbourne's Corpus Christi seminary, Father Brendan Lane, describes as a "miracle" is national.
Six priests will also be ordained in Melbourne this year, where 50 seminarians are training for Victoria and Tasmania. Brisbane, which built a new seminary for 16 students in 2008, is doubling it to accommodate 32 by the end of this year.
It has 21 trainee priests. Wagga's seminary has 20 and Perth has more than 40 in two seminaries.
Sydney has 63 seminarians.
It's a far cry from 2000 when the city was facing a chronic shortage of priests, with just 17 in training.
The rector of Sydney's Good Shepherd seminary, Father Anthony Percy, attributes the upswing to a counter-cultural source -- postmodernism. "Confronted by a postmodern world lacking in beliefs and values, many young people are seeking something solid and I would like to think they find it in the Catholic faith," Father Percy said.
"I also think Pope John Paul II and World Youth Days inspired this generation," he said.
Father Lane agrees: "Twenty years ago I thought we were finished," he said.
Melbourne turned away 25 applicants last year, most of whom applied from overseas via the internet.
Among the six priests who will be ordained this week are Kim Ha, 36, who has a diploma in construction, was born in Vietnam, grew up in a Buddhist family and came to Australia at the age of eight.
At school in Sydney's eastern suburbs a friend interested him in Christianity. He was baptised in 1997 and later spent a year as a missionary in The Philippines.
Also being ordained are Joseph Guinea, 31; Andrew James, 36, who is returning from Rome; former teacher Robert Doohan, 47; Nen Dang, 56, who will minister to Sydney's Vietnamese community; and deacon Joseph Geddeon, who grew up in Lebanon.
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