Year of the Priest begins June 19, 2009

On March 16, 2009, His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, announced a special "Year of the Priest" which begins on June 19, 2009, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and continues up to that same date in 2010.

In his letter to all bishops throughout the world about this prayerful observation, issued on April 3, 2009, at Vatican City, His Eminence, Claudio Cardinal Hummes, Perfect of the Congregation of the Clergy wrote: "The Year of the Priest represents an important opportunity to contemplate once more and with grateful awe the work of the Lord, who, 'on the night He was betrayed' (1 Cor. 11:3), willed to institute the ministerial Priesthood, linking it inseparably to the Eucharist, the source and summit of the life of the whole Church." [ ... ]