Priestly ordinations still declining in Poland
For the first time this century, the country will see fewer than 200 priestly ordinations this year.
A total of 196 new priests are scheduled to be ordained in Poland this year, continuing a long-term decline in numbers.
Poland’s Catholic information agency KAI reported that 130 of the candidates will be diocesan priests and 66 will serve within religious orders.
This is expected to be the first year in the 21st century with fewer than 200 priestly ordinations in Poland. There were 208 new priests in 2025 and 235 in 2024.
The drop in priestly ordinations is likely to be felt far beyond Poland, because the country has traditionally supplied priests to other European countries, both East and West. Poland has also long been an important source of missionary priests to Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Despite the ongoing decline, Poland remains the European country with the most priestly vocations. In France, for example, there were 90 new priests in 2025. In Germany, there were 25.
Poland has a smaller overall population than France or Germany, but it has a larger number of baptized Catholics and a significantly higher Mass attendance rate than either country.
The new priests in 2026 will be spread unevenly among Poland’s dioceses. Tarnów, commonly described as the country’s “most religious” diocese because it has the highest level of Mass attendance, will have 14 ordinations in 2026, one more than in 2025.
The next highest figures are found in the two dioceses in the capital, Warsaw. The Diocese of Warsaw-Praga, covering the east of the city, will have nine new priests. The Archdiocese of Warsaw, in the west, will have eight, five of whom studied at the Redemptoris Mater seminary, linked to the Neocatechumenal Way.
The Archdiocese of Kraków, which is strongly associated with St. John Paul II and was once a hotbed of vocations, will only have four new priests in 2026, down from seven in 2025 and 13 in 2024.
KAI reported that the number of Latin Catholic dioceses with no ordinations has risen from six in 2025 to seven in 2026. Poland’s three Greek Catholic eparchies — which only serve a fraction of the population compared to the Latin Catholic dioceses — had no new priests in either year.
KAI noted that some dioceses will have no ordinations this year because of a change to seminary formation, which now lasts seven years rather than six due to the addition of a propaedeutic (preliminary) year.
In May, the Military Ordinariate of Poland had its first priestly ordinations for 14 years.
According to the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae in Polonia, a yearly numerical overview published by the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics, almost all of Poland’s 42 Latin Catholic dioceses saw a decline in incardinated priests between 2018 and 2024.
The total number of diocesan priests nationwide fell from 24,876 to 23,274, a drop of 6.4%. The sharpest fall was in the Diocese of Łomża, in northeastern Poland, where the figure decreased from 588 to 512, an almost 13% reduction.
The biggest outlier was the Warsaw archdiocese, where priest numbers rose from 855 to 909, a more than 6% increase.
Commenting on the steady overall decline in priestly numbers, Fr. Jan Frąckowiak told KAI that it could be seen as a return to normality for the Church in Poland.
“The systematically declining number of newly ordained priests is caused by the fact that we are now descending from the peak of vocations in the entire 1,060-year history of the Church in Poland,” said Frąckowiak, a seminary rector in Poznań and chairman of the country’s Conference of Rectors of Diocesan and Religious Major Seminaries.
“Never before in history did we have more than 40 dioceses, almost every one of which had its own seminary — usually very large — and, moreover, a full seminary. This happened only once in history, and at present it seems that we are returning to the historical norm.”
Addressing the causes of the decline, he said: “I would point, for example, to demographic decline, a lower proportion of believers and practicing Catholics in society, and a reduced ability among the younger generation to make definitive commitments.”
Poland’s fertility rate fell to a new low of 1.068 in 2025, well below the replacement level of 2.1. The country’s state statistics agency has projected that the population could fall from around 37.3 million currently to 29.4 million by 2060, a decline of more than 20% over the next 35 years.