Parabola of the clergy” “

“There are 32,900 diocesan priests present in the 16 pastoral regions of Italy; their average age is 60; the largest age group is that between the ages of 55 to 81, to which over 54% of the clergy belong”. These are some of the figures that emerge from the research project “The parabola of the clergy. A socio-demographic study of diocesan priests in Italy”, presented in Rome in recent days. Promoted by the Italian Bishops’ Conference in collaboration with the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation and conducted by the sociologist Luca Diotallevi in cooperation with Stefano Molina, the survey was aimed at studying “the religious personnel of the Catholic Church in Italy”, explains the foreword to the document. The study also traces hypothetical “parabolas for the next two decades”, with comparative references to other European countries. The findings of the research were presented on the eve of the 55th general assembly of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, now in progress in Assisi (14-18 November), which has as its main topics reflection on the formation for the ministry of priests and the relation between Church and the world of health. During the assembly, the 40th anniversary of the end of Vatican Council II will also be commemorated, with a celebration and a message. FOREIGN PRIESTS. “In spite of the reduction in numbers that has occurred over the last century, the average density of clergy in Italy (0.56 priests for every 1,000 inhabitants) remains significantly higher than that in Belgium and Spain (0.46) or in France and Austria (0.31)”. The clergy, however, consist in the main of elderly priests (average age 60) and their numbers are progressively falling: “a scenario of the lack of generational turnover” in which, as the study points out, the phenomenon of “imported priests” is gaining ground, i.e. foreign priests incardinated in Italian dioceses. At the beginning of 2003 there were almost 1,500 of them: 4,5% of the total of diocesan priests, and with an average age of 44. With 232 foreign priests serving in Italy, Poland is the leading country of provenance, followed by Zaire, Colombia, India, France and Romania. “The mechanisms of the reproduction of the clergy – comments the research – evade any attempt to incorporate the relation between demand and supply of priests within rigid economic schemes; but it is equally clear that a form of parallelism does seem to exist. The process of professional ‘ethnicization’ begun in some fields generates images, stereotypes and expectations that – according to the study – is inevitably projected also on the horizon of immigrant priests, and hence on the clergy as a whole”. A DIFFERENT CLERGY. “The population of priests in Italy, in spite of the regular influx of approximately 500 new ordinations each year, will be reduced from the current 32,900 priests to circa 28,300 in 2013 and to 25,400 in 2023, predict the authors. This reduction is mainly attributable to high mortality among the elderly sections of the clergy, now numerous”. This is one of the possible future scenarios outlined by the authors of the research, LUCA DIOTALLEVI and STEFANO MOLINA, who postulate “a clergy that is not only lower in number, but different in culture, mentality and memory from that we know today”. Moreover, “given the range of roles entrusted to the diocesan clergy in Italian Catholic ecclesiastical organizations, it is easy to predict that in twenty years time parishes and dioceses will have a very different character and modus operandi that they have today due to the decline in the numbers of available priests”. While “some socio-religious differences between the various pastoral regions of Italy will be accentuated, including the variable of the growing presence of foreign priests”, “other differences, such as the regional density of clergy, will generate a slow process of convergence”. TACKLING THE CHANGES. “The next ten years will represent for Italy a window of opportunity within which the ecclesiastical organizations will have the chance to tackle the difficulties” resulting from the reduction of the clergy “not as an emergency measure and under the pressure of imperative needs”, but “by preparing to manage, and not merely suffer, the major internal and external changes taking place”. That’s one of the conclusions of the research. But this “additional period of time” must not be transformed “into an alibi for not actively tackling the necessary renovation of institutions, organizations, strategies and practices”. Innovations “must be tackled at the diocesan, interdiocesan, regional and national level”. According to the study, “it is possible to mitigate the negative impact of the trends now taking place in the diocesan clergy by supporting the revival of ordinations. This is a phenomenon, insist the authors, that is not able to support itself without vocational and formative policies. “Attention to the training of priests in the seminaries is undoubtedly necessary, but it would be a mistake to think that it is enough. Key factors – concludes the research – are in particular the parishes and the associations”.