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| Cardinal Donald Wuerl |
Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington has announced that the new
archdiocesan seminary opening for the fall semester will be named for
Blessed Pope John Paul II.
The seminary, which will be located in Northeast Washington, will
serve as a college-level pre-theology house of formation, with
seminarians attending classes at The Catholic University of America
nearby.
Cardinal Wuerl said the seminary will be blessed on Oct. 22, the
feast day of Blessed John Paul and the anniversary of his installation
as pope in 1978.
Plans for the seminary were announced in October 2010,
and the permits necessary to complete the renovation of the structure
that will house the seminary were recently finalized.
Seminarians for the archdiocese will begin their formation through
the new seminary in August, and renovation of the building is scheduled
to be completed in October.
Currently, 67 men are studying for the priesthood of the Archdiocese
of Washington, including 29 in college and pre-theology studies.
Renovation work is under way at the new seminary, which formerly housed
archdiocesan offices for Carroll Publishing and the Office of Youth
Ministry, which are now in downtown Silver Spring, Md.
The new seminary will initially have space for 30 men who will attend
Catholic University while receiving their priestly formation at the
seminary.
Before ordination they will complete an additional four years
of theology studies at seminaries such as Mount St. Mary’s in
Emmitsburg, Md., Pontifical North American College in Rome and
Theological College in Washington.
In his homily at the archdiocesan chrism Mass April 18, Cardinal
Wuerl said Pope John Paul is a special role model for today’s priests,
as a teacher, “through his ministry of personal presence ... and his
insight into and vision supporting the New Evangelization.”
“May this chrism Mass be for all of us, not only a renewal of our
priestly commitment and a renewal of our love for Christ, but a reminder
of how John Paul II is, for each of us, a model,” he said.
“All of us
can teach. All of us can be present to the people entrusted to our care,
and each of us can be an agent of the New Evangelization.”
The cardinal said Pope John Paul’s “great corpus of writings, his
encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, form a collection of teaching
unmatched by any pontificate in the 2,000-year life of the Church.”
Those writings, he said, offer “a profoundly spiritual, deeply
theological and engagingly pastoral presentation of the faith of the
Catholic Church, our heritage, the Gospel imperative and its implication
and application to the circumstances of our day.”
Cardinal Wuerl also announced the appointment of four priests who
will serve at the new Blessed John Paul II Seminary.
The appointments
were effective May 1 to coincide with the beatification.
Msgr. Robert Panke, longtime director of the archdiocesan Office of
Priest Formation and Vocations, was named rector, and Father Carter
Griffin, now a parochial vicar at St. Peter Parish on Capitol Hill, will
be vice rector of the seminary and archdiocesan priest vocations
director.
Father William Gurnee, now the pastor of Holy Angels Parish in
Avenue, Md., will be director of spiritual formation for the seminary,
and Father Mario Dorsonville, director of the Spanish Catholic Center
and vice president for mission at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese
of Washington, was named adjunct spiritual director but will also
continue his current duties.
In interviews with the Catholic Standard, the Washington
archdiocesan newspaper, Msgr. Panke and Father Griffin talked about how
Pope John Paul had influenced their priesthoods.
Msgr. Panke, who studied in Rome at the Pontifical North American
College while Pope John Paul II was the pontiff, said he was inspired by
John Paul’s love for the Church, love for the priesthood and love for
the Blessed Mother.
“He gave everything he had to preaching Christ, his message of mercy
and his message of love,” the priest said. “He was an exceptional
evangelizer. Even in his old age, young people were drawn to him because
of his relationship to Christ.”
“He was instrumental in my own conversion to Catholicism and my
calling to become a priest,” said Father Griffin, who became Catholic
while studying at Princeton University and entered the seminary after
serving with the Navy for four years, including a six-month deployment
to the Persian Gulf. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2004.
Father Griffin said it was fitting that the new seminary in the
nation’s capital will be named for John Paul II, who had great respect
for the United States and who made several pastoral visits to this
country, including a 1979 visit to Washington.