Background: World Day of Prayer for Vocations
May 12, 2019
On May 12, the Church commemorates the 56th World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Pope Francis’s message for the day is entitled “The courage to take a risk for God’s promise.”
Pope St. Paul VI instituted the day in 1964 and placed it on the Sunday in which the Gospel of the Good Shepherd is read at Mass.
“The problem of having a sufficient number of priests,” he stated in his message for the 1st World Day of Prayer for Vocations, “has an immediate impact on all of the faithful: not simply because they depend on it for the religious future of Christian society, but also because this problem is the precise and inescapable indicator of the vitality of faith and love of individual parish and diocesan communities, and the evidence of the moral health of Christian families.”
“Wherever numerous vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life are to be found, that is where people are living the Gospel with generosity,” he added.
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Further information:
- Pope Francis: Messages, World Day of Prayer for Vocations
- Pope Benedict XVI: Messages, World Day of Prayer for Vocations
- Pope St. John Paul II: Messages, World Day of Prayer for Vocations
- Pope St. Paul VI: Messages, World Day of Prayer for Vocations
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