The annual meeting of the European Vocations Service (EVS) was held at Louvain (Belgium) from 29 June to 2 July. The EVS represents the national centres for vocations of the 34 Bishops’ Conferences of Europe. This year’s meeting had as its theme: “When Christian communities becomes communities that call”. From it – says the final communiqué – “a great variety of situations emerged”. Amedeo Cencini, professor at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, appealed for “a poor idea of vocations, within which the priest is the sole actor”, to be replaced by a “global profile where each person is a protagonist of his own vocation and feels himself responsible for the happiness of others”. The archbishop of Malines-Bruxelles, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, proposed that “the current crisis of vocations be experienced as a trial similar to that of the people of God in the time of the Babylonian exile” to be able to “pass from trust in ourselves to trust in God”. According to Cardinal Danneels, “we need to keep hope alive by returning to the radical nature of the Gospel”. Four particular vocational experiences were presented in Louvain: a “home of the young” at Porto to foster vocational discernment; the preparatory year that brings together first-year seminarians in Austria; the “network of communion” forged in Flanders by the Service for Vocations; and, lastly, the story of a family in Walloon Brabant in which the vocation of a son to the priesthood was, against all the odds, born and developed.
