Washington, USA - This year's new crop of Roman Catholic priests in the United States has an average age of 35 and includes a large number of foreign-born priests and men who entered the seminary with college degrees, a study shows.
The survey, closely watched because of the country's well-documented priest shortage, was conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Researchers gathered information from 282 seminarians, or about 60 percent of the 475 candidates for the priesthood in 2007.
Although final numbers will not be available until next spring, a rise in ordinations is possible. This year's projected class would be an increase over 431 ordinations in 2006, according to Georgetown researchers.
Even so, ordination classes remain smaller than in decades past. The total number of priests serving in the United States has declined 29 percent in the last 40 years while the Catholic population has grown 40 percent.
Among the characteristics of the 2007 class:
_ 1 in 3 candidates for the priesthood was born outside the United States, with the largest numbers coming from Vietnam, Mexico, Poland and the Philippines.
_ 7 in 10 report their primary race as white or European-American. Asian priests are over-represented when compared with the U.S. Asian population, while Hispanic priests are underrepresented.
_ The average age of 35 is approximately the same as in 1998, the first year for which data are available.
_ More than 6 in 10 completed college, and 1 in 5 had attained a graduate degree in areas such as law, medicine and education.
The surveyed seminarians included 221 men studying to serve for dioceses, and 60 studying to join religious orders. One did not indicate an affiliation.