LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times
KURT STREETER
The four men were dressed in white and cream-colored robes. They knelt on the stone floor, ending up face down in a supplicating sign of obedience and respect. In front of thousands of onlookers, they were about to become Catholic priests.
“Lord have mercy,” the crowd chanted, slowly. “Christ have mercy…. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us….”
It was a ritualized, peak moment during Saturday’s ordination — an annual event held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in which seminarians become full-fledged priests, prepared after years of study to serve parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. …
Even as the number of parishioners climbs, the Roman Catholic church has long struggled with a shortage of priests in the U.S., a falloff that hasn’t been helped by sex abuse scandals that have rocked the church in recent years. (Cardinal Roger Mahony, whom some blame for failing to aggressively root out abuse during his tenure as L.A.’s archbishop, was on hand at Saturday’s ceremony.) There are currently about 40,000 priests nationwide, according to statistics from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. In 1965, there were about 60,000.
The shortage isn’t felt as acutely in Los Angeles, said Father Sam Ward, the diocese’s associate director of vocations, partly because the region attracts clerics from outside areas. Still, the diocese is pushing to boost the number ordained locally each year.
Heartened by the number of men who’ve recently entered the diocese’s St. John’s Seminary — enrollment hit 92 in the fall of 2013, up from 71 in 2008, an uptick ascribed in part to the popularity of Pope Francis — officials say they expect to soon be ordaining groups of 10 to 12 priests, and possibly more, each year.
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