A godsend: international priests

OWENSBORO, Ky. —

Sixteen of the Rev. Darrell Venters' fellow priests are running themselves ragged in Owensboro, each serving three parishes simultaneously. One priest admits he stood at an altar once and forgot which church he was in.

So Venters — a cigarette in one hand and a cellphone with a ring tone like a church bell in the other — spends most of his days recruiting priests from overseas to serve in the small towns, rolling hills and farmland that make up the Roman Catholic Diocese of Owensboro.

He sorts through e-mail and letters from foreign priests soliciting jobs in the United States, many written in formal, stilted English. He is looking, he said, for something that shouts: "This priest is just meant for Kentucky!"

"If we didn't get international priests, some of our guys would have had five parishes. If one of our guys were to leave, or, God forbid, have a heart attack and die, we didn't have anyone to fill in," Venters said.

In the past six years, he has brought 12 priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America who are serving in this diocese covering the western third of Kentucky, where a vast majority of residents are white. His experiences offer a close look at the church's drive to import foreign priests to compensate for a dearth of Americans, and the ways in which this trend is reshaping the Roman Catholic experience in America.

One of six diocesan priests now serving in the United States came from abroad, according to "International Priests in America," a large study published in 2006. About 300 international priests arrive to work in the United States each year. Even in U.S. seminaries, about one in three of those studying for the priesthood are foreign-born.

Venters has seen lows. Some foreign priests had to be sent home. One became romantically entangled with a female co-worker. One isolated himself in the rectory. Still another would not learn to drive. A priest from the Philippines left after two weeks because he could not stand the cold. A Peruvian priest was hostile toward Hispanics who were not from Peru.

"From a strictly personnel perspective," Venters said one day over lunch, "the international priests are easier to work with than the local priests. If they mess up, you just say, 'See you.' You withdraw your permission for them to stay."

But there have been victories, too, such as when Kentucky Catholics who once did not know Nigeria from Uganda opened their eyes to the conditions in the countries their priest came from, raising $6,000 to install wells in the home village of a Nigerian priest serving in Owensboro.

"You're taking a shot in the dark getting these guys," Venters said. "But honestly, other than a few, we have had really, really good results."

A missionary spirit

In earlier eras, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States depended on foreign priests from places such as Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland and Belgium. But they usually accompanied their immigrant flocks and ministered to their own people in their native language.

Nowadays, the missionary priests have little in common with the Americans who often come to them for advice and solace in times of crisis. In Owensboro, it falls to Venters, who grew up on a farm in Illinois and has barely traveled outside the country, to find ways to bridge the often large cultural divides. One foreign priest had never seen a microwave. Another thought the frost on his car one morning was the work of vandals.

"There's this assumption that a priest is a priest," said Venters, who, as the vicar for clergy, is essentially the bishop's assistant on personnel issues.

"On the church side of it, that's correct. We are a universal church and the rituals are the same, so he knows how to be a priest. The challenge is, he does not know how to be a priest in the United States."

The foreign priests in Owensboro earn the same amount as their U.S. counterparts: a base salary of $1,350 a month, plus $60 for each year since ordination. (The pay scale varies among dioceses, and many pay foreign priests significantly less than Americans.) They can also earn as much as $130 a month in Mass intentions, or special requests, plus $50 for weddings and $25 for baptisms. For the African priests, it is a windfall.

Venters knows that many of the foreign priests send part of their income home, to help with school fees, food and medicine for their families. And yet, he said, he did not believe money, though a benefit, was the reason the priests he recruited were willing to come to America.

"A lot of them, they know we need priests," he said. "And after getting to know them, I believe they truly have a missionary spirit."

Shopping for priests

Most of the priests serving in Owensboro support Venters' recruiting drive, but some voice doubts. The Rev. Dennis Holly, with the Glenmary Home Missioners, a U.S. order dedicated to serving regions that are not predominantly Catholic, like Western Kentucky, thinks the United States is essentially taking more than its share of resources, behaving like a mere consumer by spending money to attract priests from countries that have even greater shortages. He thinks the Catholic Church should place priests where they are needed most around the globe.

"We experience the priest shortage, and rather than ask the question, 'Why do we have a priest shortage?' we just import some and act like we don't have a priest shortage," Holly said. "Until we face the issue of mandatory celibacy and the ordination of women, we can't deal with the lack of response to the invitation to priesthood."

But Venters is a pragmatist. He said those were good questions, "But, in the meantime, you have to respond to the needs of people."

When cultures collide

In helping new priests deal with culture shock, Venters saw his own culture in ways he never had before.

When he took one new arrival to a restaurant, it dawned on him that "Texas toast" and "Buffalo wings" required explanation.

"When they come over, they have no connection to our national holidays," Venters said. "Thanksgiving means nothing to them. Halloween was a new thing to a lot of them. Those are cultural things, which I learned that I take for granted."

One of the newest priests, an Indian, the Rev. Shijo Vadakumkara, made a trip to the local PetSmart to pick up food for the rectory's cat. He wandered the aisles murmuring, "All this is for pets?"

Venters has sent most of the international priests to live the first few months with a U.S. pastor who can teach them the ropes, though in one case a visa took so long to arrive that a recruit from India had to go directly from the airport to his new parish to celebrate Mass. Venters checks in often on the recruits and said he was regularly heartened by what he found.

Sitting in the back row of a church in Owensboro, Venters watched the Rev. Julian Ibemere, from Nigeria, celebrate a noon Mass for 32 parishioners, most of them elderly.

Majestic in a green chasuble, Ibemere delivered his homily strolling up and down the aisle. When it was time to distribute the Eucharist, he walked to a pew and bent down to give Communion to a man he knew was too ill to stand.

After the Mass, however, one member of the congregation, Virginia Ballard, gestured toward the Nigerian priest and confided to Venters, "I can't understand what he said, but he's a sweet young man."