A Polish priest and academic says Poland’s Catholic church will increasingly recruit clergy from Africa because of a decline in the number of people coming forward for ordination.
Rev Prof Andrzej Kobylinski who is associate professor and head of the Department of Ethics at Warsaw’s Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, said Polish seminaries are “more and more deserted” with many being forced to merge or close completely.
Writing for the blog Notes from Poland and Tygodnik Powszechny magazine, Prof Kobylinski said the changes were happening “at such an alarming rate that at present over a dozen seminaries will need to be closed”.
Describing the situation as a “vocations crisis” he said the church in Poland would have to work “intensively” with dioceses in Africa to recruit more priests, adding that it was “an enormous historical change, since it was Poland and Europe which once sent missionaries to Africa.”
In 2026, 196 priests are scheduled to be ordained in Poland – 12 fewer than last year and 205 down on 2013. There were no ordinations at all in seven dioceses because of a lack of candidates.
Prof Kobylinski said Africa and “possibly India” were the main places for recruitment, although “the experiences of German and Italian dioceses show that priests from India find it harder to settle in Europe”. He added that Latin America wasn’t an option because “the Catholic church there is facing its own crisis of a mass exodus to Pentecostal churches”.