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We encourage youths in our community to pursue noble professions. We tell them to become doctors, lawyers, teachers and firefighters, to name just a few worthwhile careers.

But how often do we encourage them to become priests and pastors, or rabbis, imams and nuns? Judging from the declining ranks of Catholic clergy, it's time for members of our community, particularly youths, to give those careers some thought.

Over the weekend St. Cyril of Alexandria Catholic Church held a celebration to mark its final days with priests from The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle. The Paulists, who have led the Midtown congregation for 32 years, are scheduled to leave Tucson on June 30.

The Star reported last year that they would leave Tucson because of a priest shortage within the order that is forcing cutbacks in ministries. St. Cyril's is the only church in Tucson the order administers.

The Paulists' situation is reflective of an overall decline in the ranks of priests in recent decades.

"To put it in sports terms, our bench is thin and we don't have a lot of backup," said Bishop Gerald Kicanas, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson. "We're experiencing now what many other countries, particularly in Europe, have experienced for some time. It's a big change from the '50s, '60s and '70s, when we had so many priests.

"It's not just the Catholic Church. Other religions are having difficulty attracting people into service. It's a cultural thing. We just aren't seeing many people enter religious life."

The situation for the Tucson diocese isn't dire, but the decline in the number of priests has had an impact.

"There's definitely a pinch in the number of priests available to serve in parishes," said Fred Allison, the diocese's spokesman.

Most of the diocese's 74 parishes are run by priests, but Most Holy Nativity Parish in Rio Rico has what is called a pastoral administrator. That's a lay person who handles day-to-day administrative duties. Santa Catalina Catholic Church in Tucson has a nun as the church's pastoral administrator. Priests come in on weekends to handle sacramental ministries.

There's also an unusual situation in Douglas, where the Rev. Gilbert Malu is the pastor of three churches that aren't too far apart.

The shortage of priests is such that more than 3,200 U.S. parishes are without resident priests, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University reported in October.

The diocese and the Catholic Church are trying to reverse the trend.

Kicanas said he'd like to see 10 men from the Tucson Diocese enter the seminary each year, with a goal of ordaining somewhere between two and five new priests a year. The diocese has 14 seminarians right now, and three more will begin studies in the fall, he said.

Roman Catholic bishops in October began a program to enlist the clergy in a campaign to recruit priests.

That's where community involvement plays a role. A study released in April by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that about two-thirds of new priests were initially invited to join the priesthood by a member of the clergy. Friends and parents were the next most likely to have made the initial invitation.

That means our community has an impact in fostering future priests. It's not a stretch to say the Catholic study could also apply to other faiths.

Religion and faith are important threads in the fabric of the United States. If we value the role of the religious community and its role in society — such as feeding the homeless and helping the needy — then it's in our interest to have healthy churches and ministries.

A little encouragement could make a difference in growing the ranks of the priesthood as well as a new crop of clerics in other religions.