A meeting of leaders of the national services for vocations in Europe ended in Strasbourg on 4 July. It was attended by some fifty delegates from 25 European countries. The meeting which this year had the theme, “Master, what must I do? Guiding the young on the path of vocations” was promoted by the EVS (European Vocations Service) currently headed by Archbishop Alois Kothgasser of Salzburg (Austria). From 1st to 4th July, the national delegates thus had the opportunity to discuss the situation of vocations to the priesthood in the various European countries: from the countries of Western Europe, where says a press release – “a climate propitious to the birth of vocations is still not to be seen”, to the countries of Eastern Europe, where “the Church has regained religious freedom and is beginning to give signs of hope”, and to the Scandinavian countries, where “the Catholic Church is a minority”. More or less everywhere in Europe it was pointed out the vocational apostolate is revealed as “problematic”: it is suffering from “chronic exhaustion”. “The traditional forms of Christian catechesis says a statement presenting the meeting have been lost. Hence the need to find new ways of evangelising and fostering vocations”. In spite of the diversity of the situations, a new “European consciousness” is taking shape in the Churches: “the apostolate of vocations the EVS statement continues is not a secondary or accessory element, but an emergency activity due to the crisis of vocations. It is a pastoral activity: each must discover that his life is a good received, a gift that tends by its very nature to become a gift. In this sense, the pastoral ministry of vocations is addressed at everyone, because each person must be helped to discover his vocation and respond to it”. The challenges that the vocational ministry must try to tackle today were reviewed by Rainer Birkenmaier, former director of the national service for vocations in Germany. First, the apostolate of vocations must, by its very nature, “seek a contact with the young” and in a “church that no longer evangelises, these youngsters are growing less and less. That’s why enormous efforts must be made to find them and get to know them”. The apostolate of vocations is therefore a kind of “evangelization of the young for the young”. So a strong “link exists between the youth ministry and the hope of arousing an interest for a vocation to the ordained ministry or to consecrated life”. This prospect “opens up an enormous field of action”. The third challenge is this: “the apostolate of vocations says Birkenmaier must undertake a role of publicity”; in other words, it must “make celibacy comprehensible in a society in which this question is bitterly contested”.
