The Vatican’s education office, which in recent years has issued controversial documents on the use of psychological testing in seminaries and the admission of students with “homosexual tendencies,” will soon have more to say on the formation of future priests.
Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, says that a “brief, forceful and very clear” document on the subject will be out before next summer.
The document will apparently address the danger of secular culture to the spiritual life of clergy.
“A good number of the youth who apply to the formation centers in nations such as Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United States have a very good professional formation, sometimes high level university education,” Bruguès says, “but they lack general culture, and above all, a Christian culture.”