Vatican City, Apr 13, 2015 / 23:00 pm
Well-formed vocations are more important than numerous vocations Pope Francis said in an address to religious formators on Saturday at the Vatican.
"There is not a vocations crisis where there are consecrated people able to transmit the beauty of consecration with their own witness," the pontiff said, according to Vatican Radio's translation.
Even in the midst of declining numbers in some religious communities, the Pope said formation – rather than recruitment – should nonetheless take priority.
"It is necessary to be lovingly attentive to the path of each and to be evangelically demanding in every phase of the path of formation," he said, "beginning with vocational discernment, so that the eventual crisis of 'quantity' might not determine the much graver crisis of 'quality.'"