Washington D.C., Oct 13, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The United States Catholic Bishops Conference is launching today a new program to renew priests' sense of vocational fulfillment and to encourage them to draw on that satisfaction and invite other men to pursue the priesthood: “Fishers of Men.”
The program is designed to get priests to step back from their daily lives and reflect on the many positive reasons they pursued their vocations, to discuss those reasons with their brother priests, and ultimately to share those reasons with other men with an invitation to the priesthood.
"At the basis of the 'Fishers of Men' program is the conviction that there is a close connection between priests regenerating their appreciation of their own priestly vocation and the creation of an environment in which men are actively invited to respond to God's call to the priesthood," said Bishop Blase Cupich of Rapid City (S.D.), the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on Vocations.
Research done for the Vocations Committee indicates that an invitation from a priest is one of the most effective ways of having a man consider the priesthood. Of seminarians ordained in 2003, 78 percent said that a priest had invited them to consider the priesthood. .