POLAND'S CATHOLIC seminaries have reported another year's high intake, with more than 65 times as many preparing for the priesthood in the country as in England and Wales, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.

However, a Polish archbishop warned that the Church risked "building on sand" unless it improved its training programmes.

"Priestly vocations are holding steady," Fr Krzysztof Pawlina, chairman of the Conference of Higher Seminary Rectors, told Poland's Catholic information agency, KAI. "They aren't born from any single occurrence, such as a papal pilgrimage or the Holy Father's funeral. They're the sum of events and experiences - a divine gift which can't be explained in sociological terms."

The priest was speaking as 1,351 recruits began first-year studies at the country's 84 seminaries, bringing to 6,563 the overall number training for the priesthood. About a third of seminarians, on average, drop out, and two thirds go through to ordination. The figures - all for higher seminarians aged 18 and above - contrast with the 100 ordinands and permanent deacons currently studying at six seminaries serving the Church in England and Wales, where 31 began studies last year and 27 in 2004. In Ireland, where seven out of eight seminaries have closed in the past decade, around 80 priests are currently ordained annually for 26 dioceses, compared with 659 in 1965.

Vocations doubled in Poland after John Paul II's 1978 election, peaking in 1985-7, and began rising again in 2000, defying trends elsewhere in Europe. The country  provides around a third of European vocations and 7 per cent of the world's total, with seminary attendance ranging from 242 in the diocese of Tarnow to 47 in the small diocese of Drohiczyn.

However, a Polish Church leader cautioned last week that not enough attention was being paid to pastoral training, adding  that some seminaries were not "producing spiritual people".

"We all know the Church's pastoral activity is in a vacuum - there's much activity and plenty of initiatives and actions, but nothing coming out of them," Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan told seminary rectors at their annual conference. "As people of sensitivity, we'd like to build a spiritual construction, but this isn't happening. We're in danger of building a house on sand."

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