The role of the priest as “vocation for all vocations, to make really vocational the ordinary pastoral service of our Christian communities”, is the horizon of work for the year 2006-2007 of the National Vocations Centre (NVC), the agency of the Italian Bishops’ Conference that coordinates the vocational service of the Italian Church. A series of events are planned for the year ahead. They include: the 6th Forum of the NVC and vocational delegates of the Institutes of Consecrated Life on the theme “How to foster and proclaim together the vocation to the consecrated life in the local Church” (Sassone di Ciampino, near Rome, 26-28 October 2006); the national meeting “What priest for a Christian community at the service of all vocations?” (Rome, 3-5 January 2007); and the 22nd seminar of spiritual direction at the service of vocational guidance on the theme “Accompanying the young in their heart’s desires and hunger for God in the school of St. Augustine” (Cascia, Perugia, 10-13 April 2007). As NVC director don Luca Bonari explains, “the harmonization of the main events is based on the common endeavour of the Italian Church: it is a central objective to be kept in mind. The commitment to vocations is in fact intrinsic to the vocation and mission of all our local Churches and must not be conceived or managed as an accessory fact, still less as something extraneous. The horizon must be to render vocational the whole ordinary pastoral service of the Christian community”.
