Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Beijing (Agenzia Fides) – To pray with fervor, to study diligently, to sacrifice oneself with courage, to show passionate dedication: with reference to the motto of the Seminar and with the solemn prayer of "Our Father", on February 21 the second semester of the 2021-2022 school year of the National Seminary of the Catholic Church in China was inaugurated.
In accordance with the anti-covid health provisions of the civil authorities, the opening of the new semester was divided into two parts: for seminarians and for the various ongoing formation courses (for nuns, linguistic, for the license ...). All 219 students who returned from the winter holidays were subjected to the swab: 98 seminarians, 23 licensed students, 57 sisters in the theology course, 16 language students (English and Italian) and 25 in the sacred music training course.
This is the school year with the highest number of students in the history of the Seminary. After the spiritual retreat, the seminarians will resume their intense formation to become workers of the Lord at the service of the Church, society and neighbor, to proclaim Jesus Christ following in the footsteps of the Apostles.
The Seminary, as stated on its website http://www.nsccc.cn/, was opened in 1983 and moved to its current location in 2000. It is a complex of 20,168 square meters with 10 buildings such as the church dedicated to Annunciation, the academic building of St. John, the conference building of St. Peter, the library dedicated to St. Joseph, the building for the training of priests dedicated to Jacob, the dormitory for priests, seminarians, teachers, the canteen, the foreign student building. The Seminary, the highest institution for the formation of candidates for the priesthood in Mainland China, has carried out almost 40 years of service accompanying 18 classes of seminarians with 603 members, of whom more than 300 have been ordained priests and 7 have become Bishops. During the six years of study in the seminary, two years are dedicated to philosophy and four to theology. Since 2003 the Ongoing Formation Course for priests has been opened, with over 330 participants in 10 courses. In addition to the classic formation courses (sacred writing, theology, philosophy, spirituality, history, Latin ...) the Seminary continues to offer new courses (such as sacred music, organ ...) for the formation of nuns and lay people for pastoral and missionary needs. In addition to being a place of spiritual formation and integral human development, the Seminary is also a center of communion and exchange with the universal Church and academic collaboration (with the University of Louvain, the Institut Verbiest ...).
In recent years the Seminary has registered the presence of various authoritative foreign professors, missionaries, and has received the visit of high representatives of the Catholic Church, such as Cardinal Godfried Danneels, at the time Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, a great supporter of Chinese Catholics, who has visited China several times and the Seminary together with the superiors of religious congregations who continue to dedicate themselves to the Church in China. (NZ) (Agenzia Fides, 25/2/2022)
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