Little Rock Diocese sees turnaround in vocations after 41-year slump

By Malea Hargett

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (CNS)—The Diocese of Little Rock is emerging from a 41-year priest vocations slump, with 29 seminarians currently studying in seven different schools in the United States, Italy and Mexico.

The diocese has not seen numbers that high since 1966, the last full school year before St. John Home Mission Seminary closed in Little Rock.

The workload of Msgr. Scott Friend, diocesan vocations director, has increased significantly compared to vocation directors in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s who oversaw as few as seven seminarians. He keeps busy meeting prospective seminarians, helping the men complete entrance paperwork and visiting each seminary or college to check on the men.

This year the diocese accepted eight new seminarians. Msgr. Friend attributed the increase to a variety of factors, some of them interrelated.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child,” he said. “It takes a church to raise a priest.”
Among the factors cited by Msgr. Friend are: family support, Catholic schools and parish religious education, peer-to-peer youth ministry, good priest role models, the Knights of Columbus, the Serra Club and lots of prayers.

Many have credited Msgr. Friend with being an effective vocations recruiter and model of the diocesan priesthood. The former director of Hispanic ministry and pastor joined the diocesan vocations office in June 2005.

While not taking credit for the seminarian increase, Msgr. Friend admits that having a priest working full time as a vocations director is a big influence.

“A lot of time and resources is necessary to raise priests,” he told the Arkansas Catholic, the diocesan newspaper. “A full-time director in vocations is critical. The dioceses that do that are doing better.”

Shortly before Msgr. Friend’s appointment as vocations director, the diocese began accepting more Mexican and international seminarians. Of the 29 in the seminary now, 14 of them were born in other countries or were raised by foreign-born parents.

Victor Ruben Quinteros, a native of Argentina, became a diocesan seminarian two years ago. He said God is calling Hispanic men to the priesthood to reflect the new reality in the state. For many of these men, it is a difficult transition from Latin America to Arkansas.

“When I arrived at Little Rock I could not communicate myself in English,” he said. “I had to learn not only a new language but also a new culture very different from Argentina. ... God is teaching me to love a new family, a new home and a new country. Among our seminarians there is a sense of brotherhood, and this helps me in projecting the future of the diocesan presbyterate, in which I include myself.”

The jump to 29 seminarians is not without some growing pains. Some of the men are not fluent in English. Most of the contact they have with each other is during the summer, especially at the annual seminarian retreat in Hot Springs.

“Going into my sixth and last year of study I have found it difficult to keep in touch with my fellow brother seminarians because we are already spread thin across many seminaries,” said Eddie D’Almeida of Vilonia, who attends the Pontifical North American College in Rome.

“But I have found that, unlike many seminarians for other dioceses, all of us from the Diocese of Little Rock get along very well together,” he said.

With the increase in seminarians, the hope is that more men will be ordained after they complete six to eight years of college and theology classes.

In the past 19 years, Bishops Andrew J. McDonald and J. Peter Sartain ordained 20 men. In at least five of those years no one was ordained. Now retired, Bishop McDonald headed the Little Rock Diocese from 1972 to 2000, and Bishop Sartain, now the head of the Diocese of Joliet, Ill., was Little Rock’s bishop from 2000 to 2006.

If those currently enrolled remain in the seminary, Bishop Anthony B. Taylor, Little Rock’s current bishop, could ordain three men each in 2010, 2011 and 2012. A Little Rock bishop has not ordained three priests in a year since 1988.

Msgr. Friend said the diocese could potentially have 22 priests ordained in the next six years.