Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2008 / 14:42 pm
The new archbishop of Military Services, Timothy P. Broglio, pledged to address the alarming shortage of Catholic chaplains during his installation Mass last weekend.
In a press conference after the Mass, the new archbishop said his primary goal is to get more chaplains, saying they are “desperately needed.”
According to the Army News Service, Lt. Col. Gary Studniewski, a priest and the vocations and retention officer at the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains, said that the Army currently has 92 active-duty Catholic chaplains, and he expects to have 100 by the end of the summer. This small increase continues the upward trend of the past couple of years, but isn’t enough as the Army needs at least a couple hundred.
He explained that only 25 priests, both active duty and reserve component, are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, so some soldiers may go weeks or even months without Mass or Sacraments.