Study Probes Why Priests Leave Soon After Ordination

The Catholic University of America has launched a study, funded by the Knights of Columbus, to determine why some priests leave public ministry within a few years of ordination. The project was announced on Oct. 29, 2026.

Sara Perla, a university official, said there is a perception among some bishops and other Catholic leaders that more men have been leaving priestly ministry in their early years. “We wanted to find out whether that has any basis in the numbers, and if so, what might be contributing to it,” she said.

Lead researcher Brandon Vaidyanathan, professor of sociology and director of the university’s Institutional Flourishing Lab, said the study will deepen understanding of the factors behind why Catholic priests decide to leave public ministry. Collaborators include Stephen Cranney, data scientist and lecturer in the university’s global studies department; sociologist Maureen Day, visiting research fellow at Villanova University; Joseph Davis of the University of Virginia; and Caitlin Fitzgerald, a sociology doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame. Results are expected sometime in the fall of 2027.

The survey combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University is compiling an anonymized data set on priests ordained for U.S. dioceses from 2006 to 2025.

Father Thomas P. Gaunt, CARA’s executive director, said roughly 9,000 U.S. diocesan priests were ordained in that period: “We’ve got 9,000 names, and we have to figure out where every one of them is today.” His team relies on open-source research, such as queries on individual names, checked against diocesan clergy lists and The Official Catholic Directory, an annual statistical overview endorsed for use by the nation’s bishops, to account for changes such as medical leave, death and temporary assignments elsewhere.

Gaunt called the process “one-by-one” and said the dilemma is being able to identify and then contact those who have left the priesthood. Dioceses, he said, very properly reply that it is none of the researchers’ business, citing the privacy rights of the individual.

He described a whole mix of reasons: some priests realized the calling was a mistake and leave as “happy campers”; others are embittered by their experience with the bishop; and others consider it a traumatic part of life they do not want to revisit.

For the qualitative portion, several dozen former diocesan priests have already volunteered for semi-structured interviews of between 60 and 90 minutes, covering background and call, formation and ordination, time in ministry, the emergence of doubts and the decision to leave, and life after ministry.

Vaidyanathan said the focus is on men ordained after 2000 who left public ministry with the knowledge of their bishop or religious superior within 10 years of ordination, without requiring formal laicization. Men removed by a canonical process or who abandoned ministry without their bishop’s or superior’s knowledge are excluded. Perla said the call for participants drew 61 responses within a week, more than expected.

Perla said that when someone leaves, it is important to ask questions and learn from it for the benefit of the whole Church, and hopes the study may enhance public appreciation for the priests who persevere in their vocations for the whole of life. Vaidyanathan said it should help bishops and other Catholic leaders identify and respond to warning signs and help the Church understand the experiences of these men in their own words.