(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Mario Grech, the general secretary of the Synod of Bishops, claimed “the shortage of vocations can be a grace from God” because it allows the laity to expand their role in the Church, even by administering the sacraments.

“The shortage of vocations can be a grace from God. Some are scandalised by these words, because it could prompt the church to recognise and utilise the diverse gifts present among all Christians rather than concentrating power solely within the clergy,” said Grech in a recent Times of Malta interview with Mark Laurence Zammit.

According to Zammit, Grech was proposing not just that laity take on a greater administrative role within churches but that they “even take over some rituals and sacraments.”

The cardinal cited as an example of this a couple in Switzerland who “presid[e] over” baptisms, funerals, and weddings instead of the priest, who comes to the church only sporadically. 

While lay people can perform baptisms and marriages in emergencies, priests are the ordinary ministers of these sacraments and should be the ministers of these sacraments except for cases of urgent necessity. Priests receive the power and authority to administer each of the sacraments through Holy Orders and are the only people with the power to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the source of all graces administered through the sacraments.

In his remarks, Grech echoed Pope Francis, who suggested in 2022 that lay people should be given “the charism” of priests and religious to be able to carry on in their absence amid vocation shortages.

Despite these diocesan priest shortages, many have pointed out that Traditional Latin Mass apostolates produce priests today at a disproportionately high rate. As Father Donald Kloster has noted, such societies produce six times the number of vocations per faithful attending their respective Masses (Traditional Latin Mass vs. Novus Ordo Mass).

Catholic liturgist and author Dr. Peter Kwasniewski reposted an excerpt of Grech’s claim to X, commenting, “The difference between Catholics and non-Catholics becomes ever clearer.”

The difference between Catholics and non-Catholics becomes ever clearer. https://t.co/2Vfi6WeNAx

— Peter Kwasniewski (@DrKwasniewski) June 13, 2025

Grech, who is leading the heterodox Synod on Synodality, went so far as to say that one of the main goals of the Synod is to “shift the church away” from a clergy-based leadership “and start to give lay people more say in decision-making in their parishes, dioceses and even in the Holy See,” wrote Zammit.

Indeed, the “the democratization of the Church,” as Return to Tradition’s Anthony Stine has put it, has been the most pronounced theme of the Synod, in defiance of the Church’s traditional “top-down” authority structure, instituted by Christ Himself.

“Even if there is resistance to it among some clergy, the church must understand that the Holy Spirit is not the exclusive domain of priests,” Grech reportedly insisted, as if the Holy Spirit operated only through the sacraments.