‘The longer they’re in a place, the better it gets,’a priest recruiter says.

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN OWENSBORO, Kentucky - Sixteen of the Reverend Darrell Venters’s fellow priests are exhausting themselves here, each serving three parishes simultaneously. One priest admits he stood at an altar once and forgot exactly which church he was in.

So Father Venters, lean and leathery with a cigarette in one hand and a cellphone in the other, spends his days recruiting priests from overseas to serve in the small towns, rolling hills and farmland that make up the Roman Catholic Diocese of Owensboro.

“If we didn’t get international priests,”he said,“some of our guys would have had five parishes. ”In the last six years, he has brought 12 priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America who are serving in this diocese covering the western third of Kentucky, where a vast majority of residents are white. His experiences offer a close look at the drive to import foreign priests to compensate for a dearth of Americans .

One of six diocesan priests now serving in the United States came from abroad, according to“International Priests in America,”a large study published in 2006. About 300 international priests arrive to work in the United States each year. Even in American seminaries, about a third of those studying for the priesthood are foreign-born.

Father Venters has seen problems. Some foreign priests had to be sent home. One became romantically entangled with a female co-worker. One isolated himself in the rectory. Still another would not learn to drive. A priest from the Philippines left after two weeks because he could not stand the cold.

But there have been victories as well, when Kentucky Catholics who once did not know Nigeria from Uganda became aware of the conditions in the countries their foreign priests came from? even raising $6,000 to install wells in the home village of a Nigerian priest serving in Owensboro.

“Honestly,”Father Venters said,“other than a few, we have had really, really good results.”The foreign priests in Owensboro earn the same amount as their American counterparts: a base salary of $1,350 a month, plus $60 for each year since ordination. For the African priests, it is a windfall.

Most of the priests serving in Owensboro support Father Venters’s recruiting drive, but some voice doubts. The Reverend Dennis Holly, with the Glenmary Home Missioners, an American order dedicated to serving regions that are not predominantly Catholic, like Western Kentucky, believes America is essentially taking more than its share of resources, spending money to attract priests from countries that have even greater shortages.

“We experience the priest shortage, and rather than ask the question,‘Why do we have a priest shortage?’we just import some and act like we don’t have a priest shortage,”Father Holly said. “Until we face the issue of mandatory celibacy and the ordination of women, we can’t deal with the lack of response to the invitation to priesthood.”But Father Venters is a pragmatist. He said those were good questions,

“but, in the meantime, you have to respond to the needs of people.”

Some of the foreign priests have confided apprehensions to Father Venters. They had studied American history and knew about racism, the civil rights movement and the Ku Klux Klan.“I told them that, as much as I hated it, there is prejudice? but it’s nothing like when I was growing up,”Father Venters said.

“We never had a parish that rose up in revolt”against having a foreign priest, he said.“The longer they’re in a place, the better it gets.”

Father Venters checks in often on the recruits and said he was regularly heartened by what he found. He watched from the back row as Father Julian Ibemere from Nigeria celebrated a noon Mass for 32 parishioners.

Majestic in a green vestment, Father Ibemere delivered his homily strolling up and down the aisle. When it was time to distribute the eucharist, he bent down to give communion to a man he knew was too ill to stand.

After the Mass, one member of the congregation, Virginia Ballard, gestured toward the Nigerian priest and confided in Father Venters, “I can’t understand what he said, but he’s a sweet young man.”

Mrs.Ballard went on to praise Father Ibemere’s knowledge of the Bible, his capacity to remember the names of congregants, his willingness to teach the Americans about his home in Nigeria.“He is a holy man,”she concluded,“and we are honored to have him.”