A recent survey found that entries in France into propaedeutics, the preparatory year before full seminary studies, increased by 50 per cent between 2023 and 2025.
Many of the prospective students are part of a surprising wave of adult baptisms seen in recent years in highly secularised France, according to the Catholic daily La Croix which conducted the review.
It said these new Catholics seem to be responding to the heightened profiles of Muslims and evangelical Protestants in a society that frowns on public display of religiosity by asserting their own faith.
“Something is happening with these newly baptised,” said Fr Thomas Poussier, secretary of the National Council of Major Seminaries. “They have more significant religious practice after baptism than adult catechumens of 10 years ago. They are more involved.”
This increase does not reverse the steady decline in vocations in France. Propaedeutics enrolment grew from 99 in 2023 to 146 last year.
According to one estimate, about 70 per cent of them are expected to enter the seminary, and around half should stay on and be ordained.
The trend is already prompting seminary directors to consider changes in the way they train young men. Earlier this month, they met in Paris and agreed that rules for entering the seminary needed clarification. Often having grown up without a Catholic background, an increasing number of the newcomers have some misconceptions.
“Just recently, a young man was talking to me about becoming a priest,” said Fr Julien Dupont, a former national delegate for youth ministry. “For him, a priest stayed locked in his church to pray all day while others took care of everything else. I had to tell him, ‘My life isn’t what you think!’”
Fr Poussier said the newcomers “arrive full of enthusiasm and are ready to give their all for the Church. We must be very respectful of their faith journey … [and] careful not to see them just as a pool of new recruits.”
This issue could be on the agenda for a provincial council of the Archdiocese of Paris on welcoming and integrating these new Catholics that opens on 31 May. “We must adapt the training and be even more vigilant regarding their discernment,” Fr Poussier said.
In Germany, theology departments reported a sharp decline in student numbers. While other arts subjects saw a 12.5 per cent decline in the last six years, numbers of “full-theology” candidates in Catholic faculties in state universities such as Münster, Bonn, Tübingen, Freiburg and Bochum fell by more than 50 per cent.
In church-run institutions the decline is lower but nonetheless visible: in Frankfurt-St Georgen, Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and Trier student numbers shrunk by about a third. On the other hand, the new Cologne University of Catholic Theology reported an increase from 46 to 82 candidates.
The five-year Magister Theologiae degree is the traditional training route for Catholic priests as well as a requirement for other positions academic and leadership positions in the Church.
Faculties of Catholic theology are provided by the state while the curriculum and teaching staff are approved by the Church. Most faculties offer Bachelor and Master programmes and teacher training courses alongside the canonical route.
The growth in church-run institutions such as Cologne is partly due to rising numbers of international students, including missionaries.
The decline poses challenges for future recruitment in the German Church. While the position of the faculties in state universities is protected by law, the decline raises issues of resourcing and the wider politics of higher education as well as a questioning of the protected status of such faculties within the Church and the state.