Many young priests in the Catholic Church in Germany are alienated from modern society, according to academic Matthias Sellmann, director of the Centre for Applied Pastoral Research at the University of Bochum.
Sellmann sees "a strong need to change course," he said at a press conference organized by the German Bishops' Conference (DBK) on Friday. Sellmann and his colleagues have conducted a study on the priesthood in Germany for the bishops. Their findings show that the majority of priests do not see themselves as "creative leaders."
"They are also unfamiliar with the concerns of church reform. As a result, they will do little to creatively open up the Church and contemporary society to each other," Sellmann said.
Priests are also recognizably absent as sponsors of the Synodal Path Church reform process in Germany.
Bishop of Fulda Michael Gerber, who heads the DBK Commission for Spiritual Vocations, said he recognizes the need for reform in the training of priests. The new training regulations are about to be finalized, he said.
The question of the leadership of parishes and other organizations within the Church must also be asked anew, he said: What must a priest do, what can others do? The current study opens up a debate, he added.
At the same time, he warned against narrowing the general discussion about reforms and the shortage of priests to the topic of celibacy: "The equation that celibacy will fall and the numbers will rise does not work," he said, citing personnel concerns in the Protestant Church and a decline in applications for other Church professions.
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While the DBK registered 269 ordinations of priests in the German dioceses in 1992, there were only 33 in 2022. The number of ordained priests has been in double digits since 2007.
The researchers involved in the study emphasized that it is still mainly men from a classic Catholic, rather conservative background with an active parish life who are opting for a career as a priest, but it is precisely this background that is increasingly dwindling.
The survey involved 153 priests who were ordained between 2010 and 2022.