NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

    ST. LOUIS, 5 (NE) The Archdiocese of St. Louis was home last week to the 1999 National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors, which gathered from September 24-30 more than 200 vocation directors from all over the United States. The event focused on the challenges of attracting vocations in the new millennium, offering several reflections on priestly identity.

    Fidelity to the ministry to which priests have been consecrated was one of the main themes stressed during the National Conference. "Priests will be evangelizers for a new age by doing what they were consecrated to do - by being what they were consecrated to be," said during the conference Father Mark O'Keefe, the St. Louis Review reported.

    "The challenge for priests of today and tomorrow," stated Father O'Keefe, who is president-rector of St. Meinrad School of Theology in Indiana, "is to be faithful and effective agents of the new evangelization."

    Approximately 97 percent of all U.S. dioceses were represented at the conference, during which the centrality of sacramental life in priests was also stressed. Priests, it was said, "should frequently receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation and make it readily available to all," devoting as well themselves "to the Eucharist for the sake of fulfilling their own vocation and call to holiness."

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