In St Peter’s Cathedral in west Belfast, an increasingly rare occasion was celebrated on Sunday with the ordination of a new priest.
The Reverend Deacon Dawid Aksenczuk was ordained by Bishop Donal McKeown, the Apostolic Administrator for Down and Connor.
Speaking during the ordination, Bishop McKeown said he would be starting his time in Down and Connor at a time of “renewal and reimagining.”
In May, Bishop McKeown had spoken about a growing priest shortage in the diocese, with few young people choosing to enter the church and an increasingly punishing workload on priests.
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At the time, he said around only 84 priests were in active ministry in an area with 86 parishes and 146 churches.
Just seven priests were aged under 40, and he predicted the number of priests in the diocese would drop by half within 10 years, meaning lay people would have to take on more duties.
Speaking on Sunday, Bishop McKeown said he was ordained in 1977 at a time when the mission for priests was to help people grow their faith, the assumption being they had some to begin with in the first place.
“Your ministry over the next decades will involve a lot of evangelising. Introducing people of all ages to who Jesus is,” he told Dawid during the ordination.
“The core of your ministry is not merely the provision of services for those who wish to avail of them, many of those who are not in church haven’t actually rejected Christianity,” he said.
“They’ve never actually heard it or been invited…So Dawid, you’re not being ordained a priest today in some ethereal sense.
“You’re being called to be a priest in Down and Connor, beginning in 2023, with all its challenges and opportunities….preaching and witnessing to the gospel of Jesus has always been tough, not just nowadays.
“It will continue to be so…Dawid, ignore ecclesiastical culture wars, nourish people with divine mercy and not merely with human anger. Meet people where they are and walk with them.”
