Vocational ministry especially means “prayer and formation, not the recruitment of candidates for seminaries”; “each member of the Church has a call, and it is the task of the pastoral ministry to help each to discover what his/her own place in the Church is”; “vocational pastoral work needs to be closely integrated in the new evangelization”. These are some of the findings that emerged during the annual meeting of the European Service for Vocations (ESV), held in recent days in Warsaw on “The integration of a renewed vocational ministry in the structures of ordinary pastoral care”. There were 65 participants, including 12 bishops in charge of the vocational ministry in their respective Episcopal Conferences, and the national delegates of the European vocational offices and centres. “To ensure that in future there is a sufficient number of ordained priests currently there are 208.659 it is important that vocational pastoral care be closely integrated in the programme of the new evangelization”, pointed out the delegate of the Polish bishops, Msgr. Stefan Regmunt “A pastoral strategy that does not comprise the vocational dimension cannot be effective”, declared Amedeo Cencini, professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University. According to the primate of Poland and archbishop of Warsaw, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, “what leads to new vocations is the ‘mystery’ hidden in individual and family prayer, as also in the lifestyle of priests”. On the conclusion of the meeting, the delegates designated the new ESV coordinator to succeed Msgr. Rainer Birkenmaier. He is the Irish Fra Kevin Doran. The next meeting will be held in Strasbourg in July 2004.
