'We know that our lives began in a place and we sense or, at least, we
hope that our lives are going somewhere. Just as pilgrims keep moving
in the direction of an unseen sanctuary, so we choose to find meaning
in our life's journey."
Carlos Ballve – known as “Litus” to his friends – plays defense on the Spanish field hockey team that is competing in the London 2012 Olympic Games. But as soon as the competition ends, he will head to a Belgium seminary to begin the process of becoming priest.
The future of religious life in Europe is intimately connected with the future of the faith. This is one of the major preoccupations of the Church at this moment. There are three circumstances that do not make the vocational experience for religious life in Europe easy: cultural secularisation, religious chaos and the distrust of institutions.
“The Future as Promise” - A new book on the challenges Religious Life faces in our society today. This book presents all the conference speeches given by excellent guest speakers during our first Religious Life Conference, celebrated at the end of May in Hayes, West London.
A serious approach to discernment provides profound recognition of each individual’s worth and dignity. As well as forming new priests and nuns, this initiative will also help to remind lay men and women that each one of them has a specific calling.
The number of women joining religious orders in England and Wales has almost tripled in the last three years, according to bishops’ conference figures. Asked if this marked the beginning of a revival for women religious in Britain Fr Richard Nesbitt, Westminster vocations director, said “something is definitely happening”.
Young people don't want the religious "to lower the bar, to soft-pedal the demands of the Gospel," Archbishop Tobin said. Usually, young people will consider joining a religious community only if they are asked, he said. For many young Catholics, WYD can be the one church event where they have the time, space and camaraderie they need to start pondering the way God wants them to live their faith in the church and in the world.
The two day long Conference, in consultation with CoR of England and Wales, is being organised by the Claretian Missionaries, who maintain in different countries Institutes for Consecrated Life: like those in Rome, Madrid, Manila, Bangalore and the new ones in Argentina and Nigeria.
Reaction to the Vatican’s announced reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) took form on the social media site Twitter, where supporters of religious sisters dueled with the group’s critics.
‘The future depends on the possibility of dialogue between the old and new orders’.
Religious life is like the wheel: people keep on reinventing it. This is good in so far as it shows the Lord reinvigorating this important part of the Church’s life. What’s problematic is that new religious orders soon make the sorts of mistakes from which experience could save them while the old orders quietly fade away for lack of new life.
On Sunday, the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, Pope Benedict XVI asked families, communities and local parishes to help young men in discerning their vocation to the priesthood. “In particular, families are the first environment into which ‘breathes’ the love of God, which gives inner strength even in the midst of the difficulties and trials of life.”
Sindh governor Dr Ishrat-ul-Ibad had handed Sitara-e-Quaid-e-Azam prizes to Australian priest, Father Robert McCulloch, and an Irish nun, Sister John Berkmans Conway, for their “untiring efforts in the development of the country in the fields of education, health and promoting interfaith harmony.”
I briefly met David Rider two years ago in New York City while on retreat at the archdiocesan seminary. I was surprised to run into him on the streets of Rome last spring. He was wearing clerics. David Rider' s vocation story.
At least ten per cent of men training for the priesthood in England and Wales are now from non-Catholic backgrounds, with up to half of seminarians in some dioceses raised outside the faith, according to figures obtained by The Tablet.
The number of men training for the priesthood in England and Wales is at its highest level for nearly two decades, according to figures from the bishops' conference. There are now more than 200 seminarians preparing to serve in English and Welsh dioceses - the first time this figure has been reached since 1994.
Sister Amalia Pereda Ortiz de Zarate was a pioneer of rural healthcare. Thousands of people are mourning the death of a Spanish nun, who revolutionized healthcare in the rural northeastern state of Meghalaya. The Missionaries of Christ Jesus nun died at age 84 on Monday at Nirmali Convent in Shillong, the state capital.
A former Manchester United footballer is training to become a priest. Phil Mulryne, who was once a teammate of Ryan Giggs and David Beckham, has enrolled at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome.
When I entered the Swiss Guards, I was twenty years old and, like my fellow guards, in peak physical condition. The term “vocation” means much more than the standard dictionary definition of “a career path or line of work.” It is more of a “calling” than a “job.” According to John Paul II, your vocation answers the question, “Why am I alive?”
