Announcement

Dear faithful of the Croatian Catholic Mission in Edmonton,

We wish to inform you of an important change in the life of our community.

The care for the future pastoral life and administration of our community will now directly transition to the Archdiocese of Edmonton, to which our Croatian Mission has canonically belonged since its founding in 1978 by the then-Archbishop Joseph MacNeil.

The Archdiocese of Edmonton will appoint a temporary administrator and will keep you informed in a timely manner about the next steps, as well as the upcoming administrative and pastoral events.

Unfortunately, similar changes are becoming increasingly common across the North American continent, with communities in Montreal and Astoria (New York) facing a shortage of Croatian priests, which reflects a deepening lack of priestly vocations in Croatia.

I invite all of you to remain united in prayer – for our Croatian community, for the Archdiocese of Edmonton, and for new spiritual vocations in our Homeland.

National Director of Pastoral Care for Croats Abroad, Rev. Dr. PhD. Tomislav Markić delivered a lecture on the topic "Challenges of Pastoral Ministry to Croatian Emigrants" during the 7th Emigration Congress in Vukovar.

The task of the directorate is to care for Croats outside the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Croats are a constituent nation, he explained. Croatian minorities in other countries are under the local church jurisdiction, and the authority of the directorate pertains only to Croatian emigrants, within which they collaborate with the local Church of the host country in search of Croatian pastoral care providers.

He also reflected on the greatest current challenges of pastoral ministry. "Despite the wishes of some of our emigrant communities, we are no longer able, or soon will not be able, to provide new pastoral workers for all missions and parishes." "Some of these communities have reached the limits of financial and other sustainability, and there is an increasing sense of a lack of spiritual vocations within the Church in Croatia, which naturally results in the growing difficulty of finding new suitable priests to work with our emigrants," he noted. In the end, he mentioned the increasing number of returnees to the homeland. (Source: ika.hr)

Contact: 780-469-1010