Poland sees significant drop in seminary admissions

The president of the Conference of Major Seminaries in Poland, Reverend Piotr Kot, has revealed that the once staunchly Catholic homeland of St. John Paull is experiencing a 20% drop in seminary enrollment this year.

Kot told Poland’s Catholic news agency KAI last week that there are only 356 men in priestly formation this year, compared to 441 in 2020 and 828 just nine years ago.

The drop in numbers come in the shadow of sexual abuse scandals that have violently shaken the Church in the Eastern European nation.

But Kot insisted that it is difficult to ascertain with any real certainty the reasons for the decline.

"It is difficult to make an unambiguous diagnosis. God has certainly not stopped speaking to the hearts of young people. However, those who hear the invitation may have various reasons for resisting," the seminary official said.

"Sometimes they feel unworthy or incapable of leading such a life,” Kot said.

“Behind this may be difficult stories from the past: lack of appropriate role models in the family home, early addictions, personality problems and identity disorders," he noted.

"Individualistic tendencies"

The priest also pointed out that this decrease in the number of seminarians is distributed in a relatively similar way between dioceses and religious orders, with 47 fewer diocesan candidates and 38 fewer religious order candidates.

"Young people in the modern world have strong individualistic tendencies, [around their] career, their personal fulfillment. Having such a mindset, it is difficult to decide to sacrifice one's own life for others," said the president of the Conference of Major Seminaries.

"[Some] hesitate to follow the call of vocation, because a negative image of the Church and the priesthood is conveyed around them," he admitted.

That observation has been largely reinforced in recent years by the many sexual abuse scandals that have shaken the Church in Poland.

Journalist Tomasz Sekielski produced a documentary on Church sex abuse in 2019 that raised the ire of many Poles.

The state commission on pedocriminality then published a document last July that showed 30% of the cases of sexual abuse of minors committed between 2017 and 2020 had been committed by members of the clergy.

"Systemic problem"

This figure illustrates the extent of the systemic problem of sexual abuse in the Church in Poland, which has led to several initiatives to fight against this scourge.

The Church announced last June that it had received 368 allegations in the last two years, a surprisingly low number that left many observers perplexed.

Pope Francis' issued the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi in 2019 to deal with the bishops who mishandle or try to cover up abuse cases. 

Since its publication, the Vatican has issued a salvo of disciplinary sanctions against nine Polish bishops in the past year alone.

The latest was against retired Archbishop Marian Golebiewski of Wroclaw. The 83-year-old prelate was found guilty of "negligence" in cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests.

But despite the decline in vocations, Poland remains one of the countries in Europe with the highest number of priestly vocations. And it is still considered a Catholic nation.