Year of the Priest begins

Pope Benedict XVI has called the whole Church to celebrate a Year for Priests beginning on 19th June 2009, the Feast of the Sacred Heart.

His purpose for this year is to encourage priests in their “striving for spiritual perfection on which, above all, the effff ectiveness of their ministry depends” and to highlight “the importance of the priestʼs role and mission in the Church and in contemporary society”.

To do this the Holy Father calls us to a renewed focus on the centrality of Christ in our lives and in the Church and that “brings with it the correct appreciation of the ministerial priesthood, without which there would be neither the Eucharist, nor even the mission nor the Church herself”.

This same year is the 150th anniversary of the death of St John Vianney, the patron saint of priests, and also the occasion of the visit to England of the relics of St Therese of Lisieux – who from her Carmelite convent showed her life-long devotion to priests by praying for them, supporting them and corresponding with them.

We join with these great saints in praying for our own priests and priests throughout the world. In the next few days we shall publish a prayer for the "Year for Priests".