New ordinations as interest in priesthood grows
Four students from the Pontifical Irish College in Rome are to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood this year, it was confirmed today.
Rector of the Irish College, Msgr Liam Bergin, said there had been a recent increase in interest in the priesthood in Ireland and other countries.
Fr Kevin Doran, the National Co-ordinator of Vocations for the Catholic Church in Ireland, recently confirmed the Dublin Diocese had received a significant number of enquiries from people interested in vocations.
Fr Doran admitted interest in the Church had been concentrated in the events surrounding Pope John Paul II’s death and the election of a new head of the Catholic Church.
However, he said it was crucial for parents and teachers to ask young people would they consider the priesthood as an option.
Msgr Bergin confirmed that Liam McKinney would be ordained a priest for the Armagh Diocese, as would Patrick McCarthy for Cloyne, Shane Crombie for Meath and Giovanni La Rosa for Acireale in Sicily.
The total ordinations from Irish Seminaries for 2005 stands at 12 – with eight from St Patrick’s College in Maynooth and four from Rome.
Msgr Bergin said 10 of these priests were being ordained for Irish dioceses with the other two ordained for Mostar and Acireale in Sicily.
The ordinations are to take place in dioceses during the summer months.
At the announcement of the ordinations from the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, Msgr Bergin repeated the words Pope Benedict XVI used in May at the ordination of 21 priests for the Italian cities diocese.
Msgr Bergin said: “As the Lord came from the Father and has given us light, life and love, so too the mission must continually set us in motion, make us restless, to bring the joy of Christ to those who suffer, those who are in doubt, as well as to the reluctant.”
The Irish College in Rome, which was founded in 1628 by an Irish Franciscan and Italian Cardinal, is home to 18 seminarians and 45 post graduate priests, who will eventually return to their home dioceses to teach.
The college is now the only surviving one of a large number of Irish seminaries which were established abroad to educate priests for the Irish church during the penal law period in Ireland.
As well as educating the seminarians and priests for Ireland, the college now helps educate clergy for many other parts of the world.
