BEFORE (Fr Brendan) came to St Bridgets, as most people know, he spent nearly 8 years involved in the training of priests for Victoria and Tasmania and South Australia, at Corpus Christi College Carlton.
About 20 years ago there were less than 20 seminarians, but now numbers have grown to nearly 60. This was unexpected and we heard so much about the shortage of priests. This has been largely overcome by priests coming from overseas and the increase in newly ordained priests. Our prayers for vocations have been answered.
So keep them up. We have been blessed with many fine young men coming forward to offer their lives to serve God’s people. We need to continue to pray for them that they grow into good shepherds like Jesus. They also learn to be good at shepherding.
But most of the work is the action of God’s grace on them, as they grow spiritually, pastorally, intellectually and in human maturity.
Our Archbishop has recruited many seminarians from the same countries that most of our recent migrants have come from. They have to learn Australian culture and ways of acting, but they also have the knowledge of the culture of their country of origin.
This is a blessing. Their greatest challenge is to be fluent in English so that they can be readily understood. They do a lot of work on this.
Thank you for your support over the years.