Year for Priests website launched by Congregation for Clergy

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VATICAN CITY, June 20 (CNA) - As the Year for Priests gets underway, the Congregation for the Clergy has launched a website dedicated to providing clerics with resources about the Year.

The website, www.annussacerdotalis.org, was designed to assist priests by providing them with notes, news and documents regarding the Year for Priests. Cardinal Claudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, explained that the site is intended to help priests by facilitating their walk with Christ, especially during this Year.

The website includes the biography and message of the Holy Curé of Ars (St. Jean Vianney), lives of holy priests, a section of prayers for priests and teachings of the Fathers of the Church and the Magisterium on various theological topics.

In addition, the website allows priests to receive a newsletter with articles of interest and information for personal formation.

The Holy Father officially inaugurated the Year for Priests during Vespers at St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday evening, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He had announced his intention to declare a Year for Priests last March.

In an email to priests around the world, Cardinal Hummes noted that the last three months have been a time of “intense preparation for explaining the reasons for this special year but also, and above all, to raise enthusiasm in you and in your faithful so that this ‘time of grace’ may bear the best apostolic fruit of fidelity and intense renewal in your commitment to ministry.”

Now that the Year has begun, Hummes is calling on priests to participate with enthusiasm. “The Year for Priests has been very warmly received throughout the whole world,” he said in his email. “It is having positive repercussions. Let us get involved with commitment and creativity.”