They are willing to support vocation ministry in dioceses, in parishes and schools, in any way they can. They support vocation programs, train vocation teams in parishes and sponsor visits of prospective candidates to seminaries and novitiates. They provide a prayer base for vocations in a diocese, which is basic to vocation ministry. Focusing Vocation Ministry in a Diocese A vocation director needs direction and support from his bishop to help him focus his ministry in the diocese, or he will tend to scatter his efforts and end up with unsatisfactory results. The primary task of a diocesan vocation director is to recruit vocations for the diocesan priesthood.
Religious communities have to provide vocation personnel for their own institutes.
The diocesan vocation director certainly needs to collaborate with religious vocation personnel within his diocese. He needs to strategize with them in funding creative ways to promote vocations to priesthood and religious life. But he is not the vocation director for these communities, and his collaboration with other vocation personnel must not distract him from his primary focus, which must be future priests for his diocese. This is the reason that a diocesan priest is the most suitable vocation director for a diocese. He needs to be healthy, balanced, disciplined and a man of the church.