They ordained a bumper crop of priests in the Archdiocese of Newark yesterday — and with one interesting footnote: most were foreign-born.

Take a look:

The Archdiocese of Newark ordained 13 priests yesterday, a number believed to be the highest of any Roman Catholic diocese in the United States this year.

Ten of the men, ordained at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark by Archbishop John J . Myers, at a morning Mass in which they lay prostrate and were anointed with oil, were born in foreign countries. Three are from Colombia, two are from Nigeria, and one comes from each of the following nations: Italy, Ecuador, South Korea, the Dominican Republic and Hungary.

Increasingly, Catholic priests are foreign-born. About a quarter of the new priests being ordained nationally this year in the Catholic Church are from other nations.

In New Jersey, an ethnically diverse state, several of the priests from abroad likely will be assigned to parishes where large numbers speak their native language.

“Approximately one-third of the Catholics in the (Newark) Archdiocese are foreign-born, and approximately 40 percent are Latino,” said Monsignor Robert Wister, a church historian at Seton Hall University. “Just as the people have come from other countries, so a great number of seminarians have.”

Several of the foreign-born priests grew up in the United States. Others took years of church-sponsored English classes while seminarians.

The four other Roman Catholic dioceses in New Jersey also are ordaining priests this month. Last week, the Camden Diocese ordained two. Yesterday, the Metuchen Diocese ordained three, and the Paterson Diocese seven. Next Saturday, the Trenton Diocese will ordain three.

The Paterson Diocese’s seven make up the diocese’s largest ordination class since 1978, according to its bishop, Arthur Serratelli. Six are from other countries: three from Poland, one from the Philippines, one from Israel, and one from Colombia.

“I think it’s great,” Serratelli said of his new priests’ origins. “I’ve noticed in parishes that people consider American parishes, we have a great influx of Latinos. So there’s an even greater need for more Latino priests who speak Spanish.”

Newly ordained priests are not only more international these days, they also are older. Their average age nationally this year is 36, up from 28 in the 1960s and 26 in the 1940s. Such “second-career priests” have become more important to dioceses.

You can read more at the link. Ad multos annos!