Written by Mary Verducci | October 23, 2009

The Archdiocese of San Francisco has been blessed when it comes to providing priests for the 90 plus parishes sprinkled throughout the region, until now. The demographics of the current resident clergy is aging. The annual number of priest ordinations has dropped 50% since the 70's.



Auxillary Bishop William J. Justice is the current Vicar for Clergy for the San Francisco Archdiocese. He feels the pressure as he looks into the future. Between the years 2010-2012, 29 archdiocesan priests will retire. This demographic trend can be startling particularly when contrasted with priestly ordinations - three in 2009, and eight over the next three years - a number far short of the projected retiring priests.

At a recent conference honoring Bishop Justice, he stated, “I’ve been vicar of clergy for two-and-a-half years, and a priest ministering in the archdiocese for 41 years and this is the first year that I’ve said to priests, in a joking manner, ‘No one can get seriously ill or die. That’s an order.’ Because we don’t have anybody to replace them.”

Far too often, the parish priests have been taxed with running the perfunctory details of the parish and school in addition to his ministry. Another new trend slowly emerging is to have deacons, and lay men and women trained in parish administration to ease these administrative responsibilities so priests can play a more active role in creating vocation awareness.

St. Patrick's is under the guidance of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Enrollment at the seminary has steadily increased over the past five years to near maximum capacity of 100.
And, the trend is leaning towards a younger generation. While we will always have men in their 40s and 50s in seminaries - also known as "late vocations" - the younger men have been observed to be a bit more conservative and serious than in the past. It has created a healthy, dynamic formation process. The younger guys can learn from their experience and the older guys can get to know what the younger generation is thinking these days.

St. Patrick's has, at the request of Archbishop Niederauer, taken a proactive approach to vocations. Many of our seminarians attend masses at the parishes within the diocese to speak about their story and how they came to St. Patrick's. It literally is 'spreading the word'.