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Pope Francis has some ideas on how to fix the priest shortage
“The first [response] – because I speak as a believer – the Lord told us to pray. Prayer, prayer is miss-ing,” Pope Francis said in an interview with German weekly Die Zeit published March 8.
He called the lack of priests, to the point that some parishes are cared for by female “community leaders” in Switzerland, “a problem that the Church must resolve.”
After prayer, he recommended working “with youth who are seeking orientation. And this is very difficult, the work with youth, but it must be done because they ask for this: the youth are the great discarded ones in modern society, because they have no work in many countries.”
“For vocations, there is also another problem,” he said, “the problem of the birthrate. If there are no young men there can be no priests.”
Turning to the question of relaxing permissions for the ordination of married men and the requirement of priestly celibacy, he said that “optional celibacy is discussed, above all where priests are needed. But op-tional celibacy is not the solution.”
About Pope Francis’ ideas to help the church find new priests, it is CORRECT to state that:
I. God may send some new priests if people ask Him for it.
II. Women are motivated to be community leaders instead of priests.
III. Procreation is raised as a possible solution to the problem, since it can bring more men to the world.
IV. He considers allowing married men to be priests.
V. Young people are always useful for society.
