Few young priests in Swiss dioceses
Published: Friday, Nov 10th 2023, 12:50
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The number of candidates for the priesthood in Switzerland's dioceses is very low. According to the online portal swiss-cath, there are currently only eight seminarians in the German-speaking dioceses of Basel, Chur and St. Gallen. In 2019, there were still 33.
The number of seminarians in the diocese of Chur has fallen sharply, from 25 in 2019 to five at present. "The lower number of seminarians concerns and worries us greatly," wrote the diocese of Chur at the request of swiss-cath.ch. This year, one seminarian has decided to begin the novitiate with the Franciscans, while another has joined the Society of St. Peter.
In 2019, many of the 25 seminarians were already in their final years of training and most had been ordained. In the meantime, "unfortunately only very few new seminarians have started training". According to the diocese of Chur, this led to the large difference between the two years.
In 2019, a total of 76 seminarians were still studying throughout Switzerland, the online portal continued. Of these, 7 studied in Basel, 25 in Chur, 13 in Lausanne/Geneva/Freiburg (LGF), 29 in Lugano and one each in Sion and St. Gallen. The figures for 2019 were published by the Swiss Bishops' Conference (SBC) in September 2021.
There are currently eight seminarians in German-speaking Switzerland. The two seminarians from the French-speaking part of the diocese of Sion are studying at the "House of Seminaries" in Givisiez. This has been run jointly by the dioceses of Lausanne, Geneva, Fribourg and Sion since September 2012. swiss-catch has not received any feedback from the diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg. There are two seminaries in the diocese of Lugano with a total of 20 seminarians.
There were 1294 diocesan priests across Switzerland in 2022, compared to 1354 two years earlier, according to the Swiss Pastoral Sociological Institute (SPI) at the end of October.
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