Sydney’s younger priests are likely to have come from families where daily Mass, nightly praying of the rosary and reading the lives of the saints were common, a recent survey has confirmed.
The report, based on a survey of 13 priests and six in-depth interviews, found while not all came from a Catholic or massgoing family, a background of intense family devotion—even if they later drifted away from regular practice for a period—was the biggest factor in the vocational journey of men ordained for the archdiocese in the last 10 years.
That was surprising for researcher Professor Stephen Bullivant of the University of Notre Dame, Sydney.
“The importance of childhood religious practice in laying the groundwork for future vocations is well known, but I was struck by how many of the men reported what would count as very high levels of religiosity, even among most practising families,” he told The Catholic Weekly.
“What really struck me during the project was just how much fostering vocations is a long game.
“No matter how good a vocations team are, you need that pipeline leading back to loving, committed Catholic families of 15, 20, 25, 30 years ago to have something to work with.”
While every vocation story is unique, the report noted “significant overlaps and commonalities” among those surveyed, while Sydney was perceived as being a “safe space” for traditional Catholic doctrinal, moral and liturgical outlooks.
Foundations were laid for future priestly vocations in the home, schools, parishes and university chaplaincies.
Not all the men had been to Catholic schools, but three spoke of their school or wider school communities as being significant—one a Salesian primary school, and two from Parents for Education (Pared) Foundation schools affiliated with the prelature of Opus Dei.
Survey respondents raised in Syro-Malabar and Maronite families stressed the importance of faith-filled extended family networks.
Love of the Blessed Sacrament came through strongly and several responses stressed Eucharistic adoration or reverent liturgies as being a catalyst for their vocations.
The late Cardinal George Pell and Sydney’s World Youth Day in 2008 also heavily influenced the younger generation of priests, Bullivant explained.
“There was a sense of Sydney having a particular personality as a diocese,” he said.
“Sydney has a lot of attractions both as a city and as a diocese. It was seen as a dynamic but orthodox place, with inspiring episcopal leadership by Cardinal Pell and now Archbishop Fisher.
“Crucially, it’s also a diocese with a relatively strong track record of vocations, so lots of guys already knew someone in the seminary or knew others who were discerning.”
Bullivant recommends parishes foster a culture of devotion to the Eucharist and find ways to bring committed young Catholics together, if they wanted to support religious vocations.
“As being religious, and especially being seriously religious in this kind of way, becomes seen as weirder in the wider culture, it helps enormously to belong to a subculture that normalises it to some extent,” Bullivant said.
Ordained in 2022 and now the Catholic chaplain at the University of New South Wales, Fr Adrian Simmons is one of Sydney’s younger priests who grew up in a practicing Catholic family.
“Within my family the priesthood was something good, and I saw their lifestyle, their ministry and their mission as something worthwhile in the same way that a little boy might look at a policeman or a firefighter and see something honourable in their world,” Fr Simmons said.
“Our wonderful parish priest, Fr Graham McIntyre at Christ the King, Yagoona, just truly served God’s people and loved them and that was also an important aspect.”