The Vocations Office is looking for names of potential seminarians in your local pastorate. During Clergy Days, the vocations office launched an initiative of trying to collect names from each pastorate. Our goal is to have each pastorate share with us 5 names of young men that have signs of a possible vocation. Having a list of names helps us to be able to identify and invest in young men who have signs of a possible vocation. These names can be submitted at this website: (https://www.sfcatholic.org/vocations/discern)
As a way of bringing the lay faithful into this great ministry of vocations, each of you should have received at clergy days prayer cards and bookmarks with a QR code. These can be shared with individuals in your parish so that they can also share names with us. You help with sharing these is greatly appreciated!
Finally, the reason why we are starting this initiative is that studies show that 71% of recently ordained were encouraged by their local parish priest (https://www.usccb.org/resources/ordination%20class%202022_0.pdf), which is significantly higher than any other group (next highest was 48% by a friend). Your invitation to a young man to consider priesthood is a huge part of fostering vocations.
God Bless!
Emma Murtha | emurtha@sfcatholic.org | 605-988-3772