There are only four hundred thousand priests to serve more that five billion people, of which more than four billion are not Catholics. This averages more than nine thousand people per Catholic priest. Although the world population grew by some 900 million people in the 1980s, the number of priests declined by about 17,000. A recent increase in the number of major seminarians and novices has been insufficient to offset losses caused by the great number of aging priests. Numerous parishes have no priests and many people are left without Sunday Mass, frequent confession, and even the sacraments of baptism and marriage. 

The average age of priests worldwide is 54. In many areas of Latin America there are parishes where the priest has more than 30,000 Catholics under his care. In Asia and Africa the number of inhabitants per priest is 57,000 and 31,000 respectively. The lack of priests and consecrated persons directly affects the degree of evangelization of society, families, young people and children. Wherever there are no priests or one rarely comes, the faith grows weak, the sense of God is lost, and believers little by little follow the world: 

"Look around you, look at the fields; already they are white, ripe for the harvest" (Jn. 4:35). One look at the world shows how vast are the fields to which the Church has to bring the Gospel, the salvation of Christ. But who will harvest these fields? Will the grain not spoil for the lack of reapers? Will it not rot with the first summer storms? The field is ready, the needs are unlimited, but the laborers of the Gospel are few and insufficient.  

The harvest is great. How will all these millions of people believe in you, Lord, if they have not heard your Gospel? How are they to hear it without priests to preach it to them? How will they know you if there are no witnesses to the Gospel, if there are no priests to place their lives at the service of your Kingdom?  

Lord, the harvest is great. Send laborers to the vast field of the world. Send priests, Lord, to the countryside; to evangelize the working world; to bring your message of justice and love to the leaders of society, to businessmen; priests to give you as the Truth to intellectuals. Send priests to console the dejected, to help the sick and dying in their tribulations, and to give hope to the world. Send missionary priests to disappear into the most remote corners of the earth and implant there your cross and salvation.  

Send priests to be apostles of families to help married people live a pure and chaste love and form their children in Christian values. Send priests to give the world new hope through their holiness and example, priests to comfort the afflicted, to be doctors for sick and ailing souls; priests to help build the civilization of justice and love.  

How many of my brothers and sisters do not know you, have not heard of you, have not received the grace of divine adoption through Baptism, and perhaps live without hope! If only there were more laborers, more priests to evangelize, preach your word, and carry your message of salvation and the joy of your forgiveness... There are many people, multitudes, who live a life without meaning, weighed down in material things and the little cares of each day without any greater, more transcendent ideal. No one has ever spoken to them about God, the message of your love has never reached them. They do not know that you love them immensely, because nobody has spoken to them about you; they have never met a holy priest who was a herald of your Gospel for them.