Can I become a priest for the Diocese of Rome?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ajpirc
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
A

ajpirc

Guest
I’m discerning the priesthood and was wondering if/how I could become a presbyter under the Holy Father. Also, this isn’t related to the topic but is the Diocese of Rome the Holy See or are they 2 different Sees?
 
ajpirc said:
I’m discerning the priesthood and was wondering if/how I could become a presbyter under the Holy Father. Also, this isn’t related to the topic but is the Diocese of Rome the Holy See or are they 2 different Sees?
Click to expand...
The Holy See is different from the See of Rome. It is not a diocese. It is the seat of government of the Catholic Church. Therefore, it includes the Apostolic See, which the office of the pope, the Roman Curia, which are all of the Congregations that govern the different areas of Catholic life, the tribunal, all other departments that come under the Office of Peter. The Holy See does not include the government of Vatican City. Vatican City has it’s own parliament and its government is under the Secretary of State who acts as Prime Minister for the pope, who is the Head of State.

The See of Rome is the Diocese of Rome. The pope is always the Bishop of Rome. Even if he is elected from the Eastern Church, he becomes the Bishop of Rome. However, the Diocese of Rome is governed by a Vicar, not directly by the Bishop of Rome. It is the Vicar who decides who is ordained for his diocese and his chancellor decides such things as assignments and other canonical matters. There is also a Chancellor of Administrative Affairs. This chancellor, currently it’s a lay woman, is responsible for all the administration of the Diocese of Rome, such as property, finances, parish management and anything that does not require priest.

To join the Diocese of Rome you must follow the same rules as any other diocese. Every Catholic is incardinated into the diocese where he or she is baptized. If you move, then you become incardinated into the diocese where you reside. It’s like state residency. You’re a resident of the state where you’re born until you move. Then you lose your residency.

To join the Diocese of Rome, your bishop has to approve it. No diocese can accept a candidate from another diocese unless he is released by the bishop of his diocese. This rule does not apply to religious orders. If you join an order, your bishop does not have to approve it.

The reason is that you are asking to switch residences. In other words, you’re asking to be excardinated from your home diocese and incardinated into a diocese to which you do not have the canonical right to belong since you do not live within its boundaries.

When you apply to another diocese, such as the Diocese of Rome, there will be a form that you will be asked to submit to your bishop for his approval. In my many years of religious life, I have only heard of one case where the bishop refused to sign the release, because he was desperate for seminarians. He was not allowing anyone to leave.

Once that release is signed, then you have to go through two hoops, which are not difficult.

First, the paperwork is submitted to an admissions team that makes the recommendation to the Vicar to admit you to the diocesan seminary.

Second, if you are admitted, the admission is contingent on you getting permission from the Italian government for you to enter Italy and remain as a student. American Citizens can enter the European Union as tourists at any time. But you may not stay to work or study unless you have a permit from one of the countries in the Union. The good thing is that once you have the permit to study in one country, you can study in any country in the Union.

I don’t know what the requirements are today. When I went to Rome to study, they required a financial statement to prove that I had the money to support myself and the letter of admission from the university. It’s was pretty straightforward stuff.

These things just take time, because they move very slowly. But they don’t ask for the impossible.

The only thing that I always tell young men who want to join the Diocese of Rome because they want to work for the Holy Father is to remember that you’re really working for a Vicar. The Holy Father does not intervene in the affairs of the diocese. There are certain functions that he performs for the diocese as its bishop. But Rome has dozens of cardinals and bishops who do much of what a bishop does and there is the Vicar who oversees everything.

The good thing is that the diocesan seminarians get to see the Holy Father at every diocesan function that he attends. That’s pretty cool. I don’t know if Pope Benedict ordains the men for the Diocese of Rome. Pope John Paul did it as often as possible, Pope Paul never did. I believe that Pope Paul may have invited the men to be ordained at the Vatican along with priests from other dioceses around the world, because I know many Americans who were ordained by him.

Write and see what happens. It sounds exciting. Good luck to you.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
ajpirc said:
I’m discerning the priesthood and was wondering if/how I could become a presbyter under the Holy Father. Also, this isn’t related to the topic but is the Diocese of Rome the Holy See or are they 2 different Sees?
Click to expand...
how’s your Italian?
 
puzzleannie said:
how’s your Italian?
Click to expand...
This is a good point. If you’re going to work a priest in Rome, you will need Italian and Spanish. Most parishes have masses in Italian and at least one if not two in Spanish. The same holds true for the Diocese of Milan. As you go south, it’s more Italian and less Spanish. Because Rome is a metro area, Spanish is widely spoken by the Catholic community. They refuse to speak Italian. The clergy uses Spanish. The dioceses on the Swiss border use Italian and Swiss German. Those folks often speak more Swiss German than Italian.

In Europe, it is very common for the clergy to speak more than one language. Their second language is usually Spanish or German. Many speak English, but not as fluently as they speak Spanish and German. You may want to start learning both Italian and Spanish.

I found that with Italian and Spanish I was able to get around Rome and most of Northern Italy with great ease. Contrary to what we believe in the USA, the Italians don’t all speak Italian. They are very distinct variations of the Italian language. I found that the best Italian was in Milan. By the time that you hit the Mediterranean you’re straining to understand. They understand each other better than we understand them. It’s like throwing an American, an Indian and a Jamaican into the same room and closing the door. The national language of all of them is English. But do they speak the same English? Nooooooooooot. Throw someone from Venice, Rome and Milan into the same room and close the door. It’s the same effect. They understand each other. But the outsider who has learned one form of Italian has a tough time with the two other versions. Very often the foreigner finds that he suddenly does not understand what’s being said. It takes years to get used to the accents, different vocabulary words and the different nuances. I lived there for seven-years and felt that I finally understood on the day that I was leaving. 🤷

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
JReducation said:
This is a good point. If you’re going to work a priest in Rome, you will need Italian and Spanish. Most parishes have masses in Italian and at least one if not two in Spanish. The same holds true for the Diocese of Milan. As you go south, it’s more Italian and less Spanish. Because Rome is a metro area, Spanish is widely spoken by the Catholic community. They refuse to speak Italian. The clergy uses Spanish. The dioceses on the Swiss border use Italian and Swiss German. Those folks often speak more Swiss German than Italian.

In Europe, it is very common for the clergy to speak more than one language. Their second language is usually Spanish or German. Many speak English, but not as fluently as they speak Spanish and German. You may want to start learning both Italian and Spanish.

I found that with Italian and Spanish I was able to get around Rome and most of Northern Italy with great ease. Contrary to what we believe in the USA, the Italians don’t all speak Italian. **They are very distinct variations of the Italian language. I found that the best Italian was in Milan. By the time that you hit the Mediterranean you’re straining to understand. ** They understand each other better than we understand them. It’s like throwing an American, an Indian and a Jamaican into the same room and closing the door. The national language of all of them is English. But do they speak the same English? Nooooooooooot. Throw someone from Venice, Rome and Milan into the same room and close the door. It’s the same effect. They understand each other. But the outsider who has learned one form of Italian has a tough time with the two other versions. Very often the foreigner finds that he suddenly does not understand what’s being said. It takes years to get used to the accents, different vocabulary words and the different nuances. I lived there for seven-years and felt that I finally understood on the day that I was leaving. 🤷

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
Click to expand...
I think that you are proclaiming heresy here! 😃
The proper Italian is still considered the one spoken in Tuscany. There are no different versions of the Italian language but local dialects and in some cases completely different languages.

The really funny part was when I discovered that the “staccionata” (fence) around a property in some places is called the “fensa” and that is due to the fact that that area had a strong return of immigrants from the USA and the English word has been Italianized. 😃
 
Cristiano said:
I think that you are proclaiming heresy here! 😃
The proper Italian is still considered the one spoken in Tuscany. There are no different versions of the Italian language but local dialects and in some cases completely different languages.
Click to expand...
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

I’ve heard that one too. The Romans say they speak proper Italian. The Venetians say it’s them. I still vote for Milan. I undestood them the best. 😃

When I was in Italy, there were not as many American Italians as there are today. There was a large Spanish population, especially from the Canary Islands. Communism in the East was still strong. Therefore, there were many Eastern Europeans who had managed to get over the Alps into Switzerland and Italy.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
You think that’s broken dialect. Pshaw! My grandmother and great-aunt went back to visit Italia decades ago and they couldn’t understand a word of Italian they spoke in the old country anymore. No one who immigrated prior to the 1920s could! Lombard and Milanese Italian are all but extinct since El Duce’s fascists tried stamp them out through his nationalization programs. Take whatever the variance you find in modern Italia and multiply them exponentially - that’ll give you a feel for what passed for “real” Italian before the national government took over the schools and started reeducating people to conformity … at gun-point! O.o
  • Marty Lund
 
Cristiano said:
The really funny part was when I discovered that the “staccionata” (fence) around a property in some places is called the “fensa” and that is due to the fact that that area had a strong return of immigrants from the USA and the English word has been Italianized. 😃
Click to expand...
I am just curious; are the typical Americans who live in Italy of Italian descent, or are they more often non-Italians who just happen love the country (which would be perfectly understandable)?
 
mlund said:
Take whatever the variance you find in modern Italia and multiply them exponentially - that’ll give you a feel for what passed for “real” Italian before the national government took over the schools and started reeducating people to conformity … at gun-point! O.o
  • Marty Lund
Click to expand...
The French did that, too! Though it would be kind of nice if the Queen’s English was mandatory throughout southeastern England (just kidding! Well, not really! Estuary English and Cockney are probably the worst dialects in the world, with the latter’s accent likely being more ear-straining than the thickest accent that any Southern backwoodsman or mountaineer can offer).
 
Young_Thinker said:
I am just curious; are the typical Americans who live in Italy of Italian descent, or are they more often non-Italians who just happen love the country (which would be perfectly understandable)?
Click to expand...
I was watching the news and I was surprised to see that there are some places where there are quite a few Italians that after spending most of their lives in the USA go back to Italy for retirement. I doubt that there are a lot of Americans of Italian descent that move to Italy, or at least I doubt that they are the majority among the Americans that move to Italy.
 
Cristiano said:
I was watching the news and I was surprised to see that there are some places where there are quite a few Italians that after spending most of their lives in the USA go back to Italy for retirement. I doubt that there are a lot of Americans of Italian descent that move to Italy, or at least I doubt that they are the majority among the Americans that move to Italy.
Click to expand...
I see.
 
mlund said:
You think that’s broken dialect. Pshaw! My grandmother and great-aunt went back to visit Italia decades ago and they couldn’t understand a word of Italian they spoke in the old country anymore. No one who immigrated prior to the 1920s could! Lombard and Milanese Italian are all but extinct since El Duce’s fascists tried stamp them out through his nationalization programs. Take whatever the variance you find in modern Italia and multiply them exponentially - that’ll give you a feel for what passed for “real” Italian before the national government took over the schools and started reeducating people to conformity … at gun-point! O.o
  • Marty Lund
Click to expand...
I think that you are quite confused between dialects and Italian.There are no Lombard or Milanese Italian. Even in Lombardy there are different dialects that evolved from the vulgate and they were influenced by the French, the German and other invaders. Just look at the “dialect” from Bergamo. Another example is the language from Sardinia and Corsica, while it s close to Italian it is neither Italian or French.

Another point that you have to consider is that the immigrants from Italy usually had a very low level of education. The level of literacy was quite low in general and it was almost absolute among poor people.
 
JReducation said:
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

I’ve heard that one too. The Romans say they speak proper Italian. The Venetians say it’s them. I still vote for Milan. I undestood them the best. 😃

When I was in Italy, there were not as many American Italians as there are today. There was a large Spanish population, especially from the Canary Islands. Communism in the East was still strong. Therefore, there were many Eastern Europeans who had managed to get over the Alps into Switzerland and Italy.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
Click to expand...
It is toscano (Tuscan) because Dante’s Divine Comedy (and others) were really the 1st great works written in Italian, not Latin. All of Italy speaks the “real” Italian, usually with a twang, I guess you’d call it (think of how US Southerners sound to, say, Californians).

There was a move about 30-40 years ago to suppress the dialects (which can be much different than “real” Italian). Since then, they realized the stupidity of that, and are teaching dialect again.

I speak Italian and genovese. One example:

pillow

Italian guanciale

genovese luaghe (looAHHjeh)

Most of the words are very similar, though–ex dog

Italian: cane (kahNEH)

genovese (my grandfather’s side): cang (CAHng)

my grandmother (even though she was born on the other side of the mountain from my grandfather) cang (hahng) rhymes with tang

🙂
 
Luigi_Daniele said:
It is toscano (Tuscan) because Dante’s Divine Comedy (and others) were really the 1st great works written in Italian, not Latin. 🙂
Click to expand...
I heard that the first piece of Italian poetry is the Canticle of the Creatures by St. Francis of Assisi. I don’t know if that’s true. If it’s not, there are not any previous literary works as popular as the Canticle. The popular works in Italian seem to come after the Canticle of the Creatures.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
Cristiano said:
I think that you are quite confused between dialects and Italian.
Click to expand...
Eh, I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of what the locals, the government, and various linguistic scholars want to mince as being “languages” vs. “dialects” vs. “official Italian.” From the outside looking in someone speaking a common Venetian Italian Dialect is speaking Italian and so is someone speaking a form from Naples.

The point I’m expressing is that over time “Italian” (as in "what they speak as their indigenous language in Italy) has become more and more standardized - even if it looks chaotic and diverse today that’s nothing compared to how it used to be. One example is the difference 40 years and a fascist overhaul made on the area my great-aunt came from. It effectively made it impossible for her to communicate with anyone much younger than her own generation (or older) when they visited after the second world war. She and grandma didn’t mention having any problems reading written Italian, though.
  • Marty Lund
 
I’ve heard that old Tuscan claim many times too, largely due to Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch (although I guess our Holy Father Francis was also a Tuscan so go for it Br JR :D),

and yet…they can’t pronounce the letter c! It’s just comical to hear them try!

Apart from that, they are relatively easy to understand (relative to, say, Sardinians…), but seriously, people, c! cccccccc
 
Alighieri is considered the be the earliest of the “Masters” to use Italian as opposed to Latin. Before that works had to be in Latin to be considered “serious” literature. His works became the cornerstone for the form of Italian that would dominate the artist world in Renaissance Italy. He was a Florentine who used some Sicilian in his poetry. Three centuries later Florence would later hand down the first Italian dictionary dominated by their Toscano dialect. Heck, they would probably have snubbed St. Francis for being “too French,” anyway - assuming they got past the fact that he was an impoverished Churchman. Renaissance Italian nobles were generally a bunch of condescending materialistic snobs. 😉

I spoke with my grandmother today (she’s turning 98 soon) about her own family’s experiences with lingua italiana. Her sister Maria was born in 1906. Great-grandfather Giovanni was from Milan, while his wife Ida was from Como. Neither were illiterates. They could both read “proper” Italian, Giovanni could write it, and both spoke a Lombard dialect native to the region. That was all Great-aunt Maria and her older brother Jinx (Julio) could speak when they got to the United States in 1912, (around ages 6 and 10 respectively). Great-grandmother Ida never learned much English and stuck with Lombard dialect until she died.

Great-aunt Maria went back to Milan to visit in 1960 and again around 1962. The enforcement of standardization under the Fascist jackboot had purged dialect from the local education system and government. Few people other than old folks from Maria’s and her parent’s generations could carry on a conversation in the indigenous dialect. This was not a misunderstanding brought on by poverty or illiteracy. Ida, Giovanni, Maria, and Julio learned their dialect in a community around Milan whose elders who were born before Italian unification (back when an even earlier gang of thugs with guns invaded the Papal States and deposed the Pope from his lands).
  • Marty Lund
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top