Vocational call is responsibility of all Catholics

You’ve spoken a lot about vocations since you returned to the archdiocese in 2009. Why?
I have no doubt there are many young men being called to the priesthood and women and men called to religious life in this archdiocese who have not yet heard the call. Perhaps they have thought about it but are fearful. In every parish, there is at least one young man or woman who is being called by God to serve the church in leadership as a priest or religious. It’s our responsibility as a Catholic community to pray for those people in our parish, even if we don’t know their names.

You’ve asked the faith community to get involved.
The “work” of vocations is certainly the responsibility of the vocation director, Father Steve Bruno, who is very active in awakening vocations. But this is a shared responsibility among all priests and religious and the lay faithful. Very often, after a confirmation, an adult comes to me and says there is someone in the confirmation class they admire and believe would be a good priest or religious. I ask them if they have shared those thoughts with that young person, and 99 percent of the time the answer is no. So, I ask them to share it with that young person, because God may be using them to awaken the call.

What’s our current state of vocations?
We have 28 seminarians, and, quite honestly, I believe that’s a very low number for an archdiocese of our size. We have close to a half-million Catholics, and I believe God is calling more people to consider the priesthood and religious life. In our House of Discernment for Women, we have eight young women seriously considering religious life. Once again, I challenge us as a faith community to invite others to consider this way of life.

What about the influence of priests and sisters in your own life?
I was deeply touched by the example of priests when I was young as well as by the Sisters of Mount Carmel who taught at St. James Major School. The Sacred Heart Brothers taught me at Cor Jesu, which is now Brother Martin High School. Their teaching and example helped form me into the person I am today. God has promised that he would not leave his flock untended. Therefore, there is no doubt he is calling young men and women to leadership in the church as priests, sisters and brothers – and he uses us to help him awaken that call.

You’ve begun to reach out to Latin American countries for Spanish-speaking seminarians and priests. Why?
In our archdiocese we have a diversity of cultures, particularly serving as priests in our parishes. We are deeply indebted to the Vietnamese community for a large number of priests. We are also grateful to the Hispanic and the African priests who have joined us. Looking to the future, we do not have a sufficient number of priests to serve the needs of our growing Hispanic Catholic community. We’ve entered into an agreement with dioceses in Colombia and will be interviewing some men from that country to possibly come to the United States, attend Notre Dame Seminary and be ordained for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Is this a short-term answer?
This will be helpful for the short term, but the question we need to ask the growing Hispanic community is this: Shouldn’t we have more young Hispanic men and women coming to serve the church as leaders? The same question can be asked of the African-American community and now the Vietnamese community. We do not have sufficient numbers, proportionately, of Hispanic, Vietnamese and African-American vocations. We need priests and religious of these cultures to minister to their own. Years ago, when immigrants came to the U.S., a priest was sent with them. Now we must encourage vocations from within these communities now in the U.S.

What does all this mean?
I know that God is the vocation director – he is the one who calls. Nonetheless, we have to do our part. Sometimes parents actually discourage their children from considering a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, and it’s most unfortunate that a parent would be an obstacle to their child responding to God’s call to serve the church. For those parents, we need to pray. We have to be careful when talking about a shortage of vocations because some people talk about it as if it is God’s problem – that he’s not calling enough people. God rebuts that and says he is calling and planting the seed. But what are we doing to nurture the seed and bring it to fruition?