Argentina faces complex vocational decline

The situation doesn’t seem poised to improve any time soon.

Argentina is in the midst of a vocational crisis.

Cathedral interior in La Plata, Argentina. Credit: Alamy.

In 1990, the country saw a high of 2,260 seminarians.

This year, there are 481 diocesan seminaries, according to the Organization of Seminaries of Argentina. The number of religious seminarians is not available for this year. But in 2020, the last year for which numbers have been provided, there were 351 religious seminarians in Argentina.

The situation doesn’t seem poised to improve any time soon — this year saw just 57 new entries to Argentinian diocesan seminaries, a far cry from the 256 new entries in 1997.

According to Fr. Andrés Vallejos, formator at the Seminary of the Holy Cross in the country’s second largest diocese of Lomas de Zamora, there are a number of factors in Argentina’s vocational decline: the secularization of Argentine society, the Church’s declining credibility due to the politicization of the priesthood and the abuse crisis, and a focus on social work divorced from the rest of the Gospel.

“We’re living in a society with rapid social changes and a reduction in religious affiliation, especially the Catholic Church,” Vallejos told The Pillar.

His seminary currently has 12 men studying for the priesthood.

However, Vallejos noted that the effects of secularization have been uneven throughout the country.  

“There’s a big difference between the metropolitan area of the capital and some other big cities, and the rest of the country, especially the northwest and northeast, in which you see a more intense religious life, even sacramental life,” he explained.

“The vocational reduction is clearer in big cities. For example, the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires has the largest number of seminarians, but it has the lowest proportion when compared to its size.”

“We live in a liquid society, people rarely think of lifelong commitments, even in their work life. In the time of our parents, people entered a company and stayed there for their lives, this has changed a lot. The ‘forever’ tends to be overwhelming,” he added.

Fr. Daniel Lascano, rector of the Patagonian regions’s interdiocesan seminary, noted that regions of the country never even experienced the vocational boom of the 1980s at all.

“The Patagonia region, after the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, is the most secularized region in the country,” he told The Pillar. “Here, you cannot really speak of a decline, because we never really had many vocations.”

Students from the Patagonian region’s eight dioceses study in this seminary, which is located in Buenos Aires. The seminary has eight seminarians from these eight dioceses, plus one from the Diocese of Quilmes, in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.

Another challenge for vocations has been the hierarchy’s connection to the controversial political movement of Peronism, Vallejos said.

Peronism emerged in the postwar period, founded by General Juan Domingo Perón, who was seeking a third nationalist way between Soviet communism and American capitalism.

Initially, Peronism claimed to be inspired by the social doctrine of the Church, which led many Catholics to support it, but it has always been characterized by its ideological adaptability, and by the emergence of left and right currents within the movement. 

However, for the past 25 years, Peronismo has been growingly associated with the left in Argentina.

Vallejos believes that the association of certain sectors of the Church with Peronismo might have an impact on vocational apostolate, especially among the middle and upper classes.

“People are very sensitive to this,” he stressed.

Since the 1960s, Argentina has had “curas villeros” (villero priests) who live and serve in the poorest areas of Argentina’s large cities. Some villero priests became folk heroes after they were murdered by the military dictatorship in the 1970s.

But some villero priests have been historically close to left-wing movements and parties in the country, and are overtly public in their support for Peronismo.

This politicization and focus on social work without preaching the Gospel leads to a lack of credibility for the Church, Vallejos said. He stressed that social work is part of the Christian life, “young people do not necessarily associate it with a clear motivation to commit themselves to Jesus and the Kingdom.”

“We need to maintain a balance between social commitment and deeper, spiritual values that feed this social commitment,” he said.

“We need to be more radically evangelical in our witness. We need people to see our link with Jesus and the values of the kingdom announced by Him.

The abuse crisis has also contributed to the Church’s lack of credibility in Argentine society, Vallejos added.

“The abuse scandals have really impacted the Church in the last 20-25 years, even if in Argentina we haven’t had the level of crisis you’ve seen in Chile, which is the paradigmatic case in South America,” he told The Pillar.

But not all Argentine seminaries have struggled in recent years. There are conservative and traditionalist seminaries and institutions in Argentina with a healthy vocation stream, though some of these have faced other challenges. 

For example, the seminary of the Diocese of San Rafael, perhaps the most traditionalist in Argentina, was booming with vocations—it had almost 40 seminarians, the highest number in any seminary in Argentina after Buenos Aires.

But the seminary was shut down in 2020 by Bishop Eduardo María Taussig – and its seminarians scattered to other seminaries throughout the country – after formators refused to obey the bishop’s order that communion must be given in the hand during the pandemic.

When the bishop closed the seminary, a protest – allegedly organized by a diocesan priest – was held, in which the bishop’s car tires were slashed, and people raised banners and disrupted the celebration of a Mass.  

Vallejos and Lascano noted that these conservative groups have been generally successful at attracting vocations. But Lascano questioned whether they are able to adequately respond to the needs of young men coming from difficult backgrounds.

“We always receive in our seminaries young men from broken families, who grew up in contexts of violence, which wasn’t usually the case a few years ago. But now it happens,” he said.

“You have young men who want to consecrate themselves to the Lord but have all these wounds,” he said. “If you cling to rigidity, sometimes it’s hard to work out these psychological and affective aspects, it’s important to have a more integrative and even liberating formation process.”

The Church in Argentina recently conducted a large poll among seminarians about their vocation, formation, and thoughts about their future priesthood.  

When asked about their path to the seminary and obstacles that they may have faced, many cited personal and family finances.

“The number one reason that kept them on the fence was their family reality—many of these seminarians come from poor communities, so they are concerned about the economic contribution they can bring to their families or a sick loved one they used to care for,” Vallejos noted.

“The second reason is the radical change seminary brings to their lives regarding their studies, work, economic independence, and social life,” he added. “Celibacy appears in third place.”

Vallejos said the number of seminarians coming from underserved communities has actually grown while total vocations have fallen.

“Many of these young men coming from villas or poorer areas have entered because of strong spiritual experience,” he said.

“I think we underestimate poor people. We tend to think that because they don’t have good public services or enough to eat, they don’t want to hear anything about spiritual things or don’t want an intellectual formation,” he continued.

“Right now there are a lot of young professionals or university students living in these [poor] communities. The growth of Evangelicals and the rise in vocations coming from these areas show you that these people want to receive the Gospel.”

“There’s a saying in Argentina that says that the poor go to a Catholic Church for bread and milk and to a Protestant church for the Word of God. This can’t be - we have to feed them physically and spiritually.”

Despite the dire vocations situation in Argentina, and the likelihood that more seminaries will close in the coming years, Vallejos believes there is hope – if the local Church can renew its focus on the Gospel.

“We need to return to the essence of the Gospel. Everything we do must be explicitly connected to the Gospel, especially our social commitment,” Vallejos told The Pillar.

“In the middle and upper class, there is a strong criticism of the Church’s social commitment when it’s linked to party politics. Young people are asking us for more spirituality, and a deeper interior life. That the Church announces its message, without aggressiveness, but with clarity.”

Vallejos does not believe that the Church must pick between doctrinal orthodoxy and social commitment. Rather, he said, the two must co-exist, but be properly ordered.

“The social situation demands of us a very clear social commitment, but this cannot be the exclusive mission of the Church,” he said. “We’re not the government or an NGO. Our fundamental mission is to announce Jesus Christ.”

Vallejos and Lascano both believe that priestly role models are also important in helping young men see themselves as possible priests.

“One of the great factors seminarians mentioned in the survey [about what] helped them enter seminary was priestly testimony: the accompaniment, closeness, and inspiration of a concrete priest that allowed them to see themselves in the future and say that they wanted to do what this priest does and be what this priest is,” he said.

“What we see today is a significant number of priests that are giving everything to address the social realities in their communities, but are hardly seen as men living their ministry with human and spiritual fullness. It is difficult that such a life can make young men inquire about the possibility of a priestly life,” he continued.

“There’s the danger to seeing the priest as the boss, as the one who knows everything. Sometimes it seems we think that the priest must be an engineer, a doctor, and administrator, a professor, everything. We tend to think that the priest must be in front of every project. And this is a very clericalist attitude,” Lascano said.

“No, no. We’re here to be shepherds, we’re servants of our people, who belong to the Church and the Lord. We’re here to shepherd God’s people and be ‘shepherded’ by them. We need to defeat this attitude that the priest has to do everything, we’re here to serve people with the Gospel as a principle.”

“If we live a priestly life with greater fullness amid the challenges, crises, conflicts, and difficulties we face, we can show these inquiring young men a way to channel their discernment,” Vallejos stressed.

“But if we’re occupied in sustaining structures, attending to social emergencies, and we leave our priestly identity in the second place, it will be difficult for us to have an impact, no matter how great our vocational and pastoral plans are.”