The diminishing vocations to the priesthood have had an effect not only in the United States, but in mission countries, particularly Latin America.

Reuters takes a look:

They avoid taking buses, make sure friends know their schedules, and rarely go out when it’s dark.

For the three foreign-born Roman Catholic bishops under death threat in Brazil’s northeastern state of Para, speaking out against social ills that plague this often-lawless area at the Amazon River’s mouth has come at a price.

Yet they still noisily involve themselves in rights issues here, part of a tradition of Catholic priests who came to Latin America with their views formed by 1970s Liberation Theology that emphasizes justice for the poor and oppressed.

It is a tradition that is dying as the missionaries who came here in the 1960s, 70s and 80s grow older and the flow of priests from Europe and the United States dries up as fewer people enter the Church.

“When I first came here there were many more foreign priests. Now we go years without anyone new arriving,” said Bishop Flavio Giovenale, a tall Italian with an infectious grin who began his first mission in Brazil 34 years ago.

For the past 11 years he has been the bishop of Abaetetuba, a dirt-poor riverbank town about 120 kilometres (75 miles) west of the state capital Belem. He has faced regular death threats for speaking out against social problems and crime that have steadily grown as the area became a transit point for cocaine shipped down the world’s greatest river from Colombia.

At 54 he is one of the youngest of Para’s 11 foreign-born bishops, who often find themselves on the front lines of rights battles due to high levels of violence, land disputes and drug trafficking combined with a widespread absence of government. The powerful, including corrupt politicians and police, are often the ones with most to lose from their denunciations.

Para, the second-biggest state in the world’s largest Catholic nation, has a total of 13 bishops for a population of about 7 million people.

Latin America has historically been among the most dangerous regions for Catholic missionaries. Five Catholic clergy were murdered in the continent in 2008 out of 20 worldwide, according to Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

The risks the clergy face in Brazil became clear in February 2005 when 73-year-old U.S. Catholic nun Dorothy Stang was gunned down holding her Bible in the remote Para town of Anapu, where she had been defending peasants’ rights against powerful landowners.

Church and human rights officials say there is no shortage of Brazilian priests to take the place of the ageing foreign-born bishops. But with lower profiles and family members living in the country, they are often more vulnerable to the threats.

“This era is over,” said Joao Gierse, a 48-year-old priest who said no fellow Germans from the Franciscan order had followed him to Brazil since he was sent in 1990. “Europe itself doesn’t have enough priests.”

Read on at the link for the rest.

PHOTO: Bishop Flavio Giovenale, by AP.