Vatican consultor sees need to ‘rethink’ psycho-affective formation of priests
January 05, 2026
A consultor to the Dicastery for the Clergy said that because the priest is “a man among men, it is necessary to cultivate and rethink the psycho-affective formation of priests.”
“The priest-man knows the experience of fatigue and especially of loneliness, which afflicts the existence of many priests, partly due to the lack of attention given to the more exquisitely horizontal and natural dimensions of friendship in initial and ongoing formation,” Dr. Chiara Urbano, a psychologist, wrote in an article published in the January 3 edition of the Vatican newspaper.
Welcoming Pope Leo XIV’s recent apostolic letter commemorating two conciliar decrees on the priesthood, Dr. Urbano said that the letter is addressed to priests, “who bear enormous burdens in this complex time, but also to all of us, lay men and women who have a ‘deep thirst’ for the priestly vocation and for ‘believing and credible witnesses of God’s Love,’ from whom we often demand a superhuman, and therefore unjust, availability.”
“The Letter is a complex and therefore refined operation, also from a psychological point of view, because it maintains a double perspective: on the dimensions of the priest’s life that need to be rethought, and at the same time on the beauty of a vocation that needs men who are humanly and affectively integrated,” she continued. “I see in the call to happiness, to recovering the affective dimensions without discarding anything, a very significant recognition of the humanity of priests, a humanity that strengthens their vocation as a response of Love, and relaunches it in its uniqueness.”
Dr. Urbano is the author of Vocazioni felici: Integrare orientamento sessuale, affetti e relazioni [Happy Vocations: Integrating Sexual Orientation, Affections and Relationships], published in April 2025 with a preface by Pope Francis.
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Further information:
- «Non c’è niente di voi che debba essere scartato» (L'Osservatore Romano, 1/3/26)
- Cardinals tout book on vocations and sexual orientation; Pope Francis writes preface (CWN, 4/11/25)
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