Foreign-born priests step up to serve Catholic Church

DETROIT – The U.S. Catholic Church is increasingly turning to foreign-born priests to staff its parishes as it struggles with the decline in the number of American men studying to wear the Roman collar.

In 2011, about one-third of priests ordained in U.S. Catholic dioceses were foreign-born, up almost 50 percent from 1999, according to data Georgetown University compiled for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The number of foreign-born seminarians has varied between 20 percent and 30 percent over the last decade.

At the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary, there are two seminarians from Australia and England studying to be ordained to work in metro Detroit. Another 10 foreign-born seminarians are at Sacred Heart studying to work for other U.S. dioceses.

Of the 293 priests serving at metro Detroit, for example, more than 50 are foreign-born, hailing from countries such as India, Vietnam, Mexico, the Philippines, Africa, Poland and Ireland.

The Catholic Church in the U.S. has always relied on immigrant priests, as waves of Germans, Italians, Poles and French, for example, brought over priests from their own communities. But now, many work in parishes where they are contending with American culture or an immigrant culture not their own.