Christopher Habal’s band tours high schools run by the Catholic Church in the Philippines with the message that it’s cool to join the priesthood.
The all-male group raps, sings and plays the latest pop songs, accompanied by a magician and female dancers from a Jesuit university. Then comes Habal’s pitch to the students to consider a career as a cleric.
“There has been a remarkable decline in the youth’s interest to join the priesthood,” said Estelito Villegas of the San Carlos Formation Center, a seminary in Guadalupe, Makati. “Through these activities, we hope to catch their attention.”
With Asia’s largest Catholic country suffering a shortfall of about 25,000 priests, various seminaries and religious orders are using creative marketing to attract young men.
Ideally, there should be one priest for every 2,000 people in a parish. Now, it’s just one for every 15,000.
Materialism and sex scandals in the Church at home and abroad have contributed to the decline in the number of young priests, said Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle.
Tagle, chair of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ Episcopal Commission on Doctrine of Faith, said the problem was worsened by the migration of Filipino clerics to other countries where shortages are even worse.
Some 800 priests leave each year to work in parts of Europe and North America with large Catholic populations.
Priests’ exodus
“We are sending Filipino priests to Spain,” Tagle said of the country that brought Christianity to the Philippines in the 16th century after the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor in the service of the Spanish crown.
“While other countries are closing seminaries, we still have a lot of candidates,” he added. “We need priests here. But in our poverty, we share.”
Nelson Navarro, a commentator on religion, said the migration of priests to other countries may be likened to the diaspora of eight million Filipino workers who have sought greener pastures overseas.
“It works the same way,” he said. “If you go abroad, you have a better income, more opportunities and a chance to see the world. It’s a big attraction.”
But some seminarians disputed Navarro’s views.
Cesar Mallari, due to complete his theology studies next year, said Church servants should not regard their work as a way to earn a living.
“It is not good,” he said. “It is looking at priesthood as a profession and not as a vocation.”
Church leaders said the number of priests has not kept pace with the rapidly growing Philippine population, boosting the need for creative recruitment techniques.
Colorful leaflets promoting the benefits of the priesthood have been distributed to Catholic schools and parishes across the nation of 82 million. The Church has also ventured onto the Internet to attract teenagers to the pulpit.
“Who will replace the old ones if we don’t go out there and encourage the graduating high school students to consider the vocation?” said Villegas of the seminary in Manila. “For all you know, some have the calling and need to hear it from us.