Parishes and “pastoral units” are, in the ecclesial sphere, the two structures from which we need to start out to “rejuvenate” the “vitality of the Christian faith of our people and their sense of belonging to the Church”. So said Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), on opening the work of the permanent Council of Italian bishops on 11 March. To achieve this objective, the cardinal continued, the parish must not “degenerate into a closed circle”, but must on the contrary “turn the territory into the premise of its immediate missionary outreach”, through a “differentiated” pastoral ministry that makes provision for formative itineraries of “authentic Christian initiation”. The decline in vocations, in Ruini’s view, is not only a question of “numbers”; what are needed are priests who do not remain enclosed within the “protected” circle of neighbours and friends, but are “capable of dialoguing in the name of Christ with all kinds of people and situations”. According to the figures in the Statistical Yearbook of the Church referring to 1999, there are 25,770 parishes in Italy, of which 20,000 assigned to the diocesan clergy and 2,000 to religious; the remainder are “in the care” of vicar priests, deacons or women religious.
