As cardinals gather in the Vatican to elect a new pope – with a Filipino among the favourites – the church in Asia’s most Catholic country is grappling with a decline in those with a vocation for the priesthood.
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“According to the statistics we have … one priest is catering to around 9,000 Catholics,” John Alfred Rabena, chancellor of UST Central Seminary, one the country’s oldest, said this week.
It is a situation that was leading to “exhaustion” among an overworked clergy, he said during a visit to the seminary’s art deco building on the sprawling University of Santo Tomas campus.
Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is among the favourites to succeed Pope Francis, while another Filipino, Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, has emerged as a late dark horse candidate.
While officially cautioned not to campaign for their countrymen, clergymen in the Philippines said they believe a Filipino pope could inspire a surge in recruits to the flagging ranks of the priesthood.
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Father Robert Reyes, a well-known activist priest, said he sounded the alarm during his 1987-98 tenure as national vocation director of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).