AD CATHOLICI SACERDOTII. - Opening words of the encyclical with which Pius XI (Dec. 20, 1935: AAS, 28 [1936], pp. 5-53), on the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee, intended worthily to celebrate the dignity and the character of the Catholic priest.
The latter, in fact, is by vocation and by divine mandate « the minister of Christ and the dispenser of the mysteries of God » (I Cor. 4:1); he offers to God on the altar the clean oblation foretold by Malachi (Mal. 1:11), performing that sacrificial action which has a real efficacy for reconciling sinners with the divine Majesty; he remits sins in the name of God; he accompanies man throughout the whole course of life, administering to him the appropriate sacraments; he blesses Christian marriage and defends its prerogatives; he is the preeminent apostle of the education of youth; he mitigates social conflicts, preaching Christian brotherhood, justice and evangelical charity; he has the inalienable right and the imprescriptible duty to teach and instruct (Mt. 28:19-20).
Hence for him there follows a pressing series of duties so that his ministry may attain the goal indicated by Christ and may not stray, much less cause the little sheep entrusted to his care to stray: holiness of life, interior spiritual formation, assiduous prayer, detachment from the goods of the earth, renunciation, by means of celibacy, of the joys and consolations that he could otherwise honestly allow himself in another kind of life; sure knowledge and doctrine; zeal that faces every hardship and even death for the defense of the truth. Hence also the vigilant care of bishops in the choice and the spiritual and cultural formation of candidates for the priesthood.
It is to show how the doctrine set forth in the encyclical was not a dead letter that Pius XI recalls the particular cares directed from the very beginning of his pontificate to the formation of clerics with the Apostolic Letter Officiorum omnium of Aug. 1, 1922 (AAS, 14 [1922], p. 449 ff.), with the Apostolic Constitution Deus scientiarum Dominus of May 24, 1931 (AAS, 29 [1931], p. 241 ff.) and with the seminaries either erected where there were none or provided with new, more spacious and dignified premises or better supplied with means and personnel.