The Benedict Effect: 2015 Largest Ordination Class in Decades!

The Ratzinger legacy: 25% increase in US ordinations for 2015!

According to the latest data from the USCCB (a study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate of Georgetown University), there are almost 600 priestly ordinandi (595 to be exact) for 2015. There were 477 last year.

That is an increase of around 25% in only one year.

This is one of the most hardy signs of a vocational revival after a multiple-decade long crisis beginning right after the Council, coinciding with the cultural explosion of 1968.

Some figures: there were 994 ordinations in 1965, 771 in 1975, 533 in 1985, 511 in 1995 and 454 in 2005.

While it is clear that the downward curve was leveling off already for a some years, now, in fact, it seems there is a clear and vibrant inversion of that trend.

The median age of the ordinandi remains high, though not excessively, at 34 years old.

A forth of them were born outside the US in countries like Nigeria, Poland, Vietnam, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines.

Most of them are cradle Catholics, 7% converts.

84% state that both parents are Catholic.

Very significantly 70% claim that they regularly prayed the Rosary or did Eucharistic Adoration before entering seminary.

It must be noted that most ordinandi of 2015 entered seminary around six years ago, in the middle of the Pontificate of Benedict XVI.

It was also Joseph Ratzinger who made a decisive shift in the US episcopate--begun under John Paul II--with the help of consulters like Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke on the Congregation of Bishops during crucial years of the Benedictine Pontificate.

Today the Conference of Bishops of the United States is among those who most clearly carry the woytylian/ratzingerian mark in taking public positions, in pastoral decisions, in the defense of the Magisterium, and in its missionary impetus.

This has facilitated, among other things, the overcoming of a crisis which seemed fatal to some, regarding the innumerable sexual abuse scandals committed by members of the clergy and hierarchy, which have brought very many diocese to their knees and given way to a unprecedented campaign of loss of credibility for the Catholic priesthood.

Source: Messainlatino.it
Plinthos translation.

P.S. We have yet to see whether the Pope Francis/ Cardinal Wuerl (Burke's replacement on the Congregation of Bishops) team will continue the trend. Does not look promising!

"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

1 Corinthians 14:8.