CBS news did a great job with Asian seminarian report

The Asian seminarian report on the CBS evening news last night was very good. I know one of the seminarians pretty well, Joe Kim, and I have met the other one (I have a close friend who is in the seminary with these two gentlemen). They are both solid Catholics and will be excellent priests. Here is the web page to the video of the report plus they have two bonus web-only videos of clips they did not use on the TV:
CBS news report

I like the way they said Asians are like the new Irish in Catholic terms. We definitely are getting more Asian priests here in San Jose and they have been mostly solid orthodox priests - my parish has had 4 consecutive Asian Associate vicars ( chinese, 2 vietnamese and now a filipino) and two of them are now pastors at another parish in San Jose Diocese. Their accents are sometimes hard to understand but you get used to them and they get better at speaking english also. I am sure that the italians at a mostly irish parish had a hard time understanding the irish priests also. I still have a hard time understanding some irish priests :)

Pope talks to young people about the bible, vocations and science

I just love our new Pope. Pope Benedict is a great pope already, his encyclical on Love is great, everyone should read it. He also is great at teaching the Catholic faith. He spoke to a group
of young people for the annual World Youth Day (the off year version that is held in local dioceses, the big WYD is not until 2008 in Australia) in the Rome Diocese. Here is the EWTN summary
of this address:
Pope Benedict answering questions from young people.

I understand that some Catholics are criticizing the Pope for not cleaning up the Church faster than he is. To them I say Patience. As I have seen in other blogs, the Pope has a lot to deal with around the world so he cannot change the Church in one year, I see a gradual change in the way the Church is run and that is probably for the best. May God bless Pope Benedict during this busy time of year, Holy Week is the busiest time for any priest/bishop/cardinal/Pope.

Local seminarians

I have gotten news that a news item on CBS News at 5:30 pm (Pacific time) on Tuesday will be about the number of Asian seminarians in Catholic seminaries especially out here in the west. Our diocese uses St. Patrick's at Menlo Park and I have met some of these Asian seminarians and they seem to be good men that have a great love for Jesus and the Church. CBS is probably doing this news item for two reasons, 1) the San Jose Mercury News had a great article about Asian seminarians a few weeks ago. Here is the article reprinted in another newspaper (the Mercury News is part of Knight Ridder, which owns for now a number of papers across the country - they have sold all the papers but that hasn't been finalized yet):
San Jose Mercury News article
2) it is the start of holy week - the time of the year when the News Media remembers there are tons of Christians and they put out all their Christian articles during this week ( check out the magazine racks and see Jesus this week but never on any other week).

So check out CBS news to see if they do a good job with this - I hear they interviewed Fr. Mark Catalana - the vocations director of the San Jose Diocese and a great priest. Let us all pray that this news item may kindle a desire in good men to become priests, especially Asians and other minorities (who are quickly becoming majorities in the US and the Catholic Church).