Priests for export only

A FULLY UNITED EUROPE on economical and political fronts may be slow in the making. But a Catholic institute in the Netherlands is wasting no time in its efforts to link all parts of the Continent and British Isles in parish work (w rites Ann Kimmel).
The institute, based in Maastricht, acts as a kind of Common Market for priests.
Men from countries that have enough to go round—like Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Northern Spain — take a year's course there to prepare for entering seminary in a country that has a serious shortage of priests.
Each one makes his own choice. Then he studies the language, history and literature of his new country in depth, and for several weeks he' helps out in parishes there to get the feel of the place and get rid of any "romantic illusions he may have about it".
That is the description the head of the institute gave me last
week when he ss as in London. Mgr. Jan J. Dellepoort, who has studied the patterns of priestly vocations all over Europe, was here to speak at a seminar on vocations.
The most distressed areas, he says, are the large industrial cities of France, Germany, Austria and Scandinavia which has always been mission territory for Catholics.
Problems have been aggravated in recent years, he says. The' big cities have been flooded with foreign workers since the Common Market began, and northern Germany and Scandinavia have taken in hundreds of thousands of Catholic refugees from behind the Iron Curtain,
Priests to minister to all of them are hard to find.
Since the Institute for Mutual Priestly Aid began five years ago, 113 have finished the course and gone on to their new country's seminary. One from the Netherlands is at Ushaw. Twelve have already been ordained. And this summer Mgr. Deliepoort still go to Ireland to ask young men there to take the course. Germany and Scandinavia, he says, are especially keen to have Irish priests.
Besides training future seminarians, the institute tries to promote co-operation between countries in various other ways.
During the summer it sends priests from the Netherlands and Belgium to Germany and Austria so that priests there can take a holiday. Research on vocations and seminary education throughout Europe is made and recorded at the institute.
Last September it held an international meeting on seminary training, giving priests from different countries a chance to learn about each others education.
The participants decided to meet again two years from now, and they set up committees of priests as well as lay psychologists and sociologists to study various subjects,