Report shares insights into consecrated religious who, bishop says, reveal God’s call to love ‘with one’s whole life’

Consecrated men and women “reveal God’s invitation to love him with one’s whole life” on earth, in hope of doing so eternally in heaven, said Archbishop Ronald A Hicks, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations.

The archbishop shared his thoughts in a 27 January statement ahead of the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life, established by St John Paul II in 1997 and observed by the Catholic Church on 2 February.

Accompanying the archbishop’s statement was an annual survey commissioned by the USCCB on men and women religious who professed their perpetual vows in 2025.

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The report – conducted by the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, with an overall response rate of 72 per cent (520 of 723 major superiors) – showed that 82 per cent said their communities had no perpetual professions in 2025.

Still, of those who professed permanent vows, most were raised Catholic, highly educated, and regular practitioners of prayer, reflection and Eucharistic adoration. One member of the 2025 religious profession class indicated that true vocations can defy all odds.

“I once tried to outsmart God with a bargain I thought he could not pull off,” admitted Sister Mary Augustine Pham, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Mary Immaculate Province, in her online USCCB profile.

Ultimately, she said, “I began to understand, like St Augustine, that the restlessness I kept trying to ignore was really His voice inviting me to rest in Him, the One I now know as my Bridegroom.”