VATICAN - Study Seminar for Bishops - Archbishop Sarah describes the activity of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples to guarantee the best formation and education for clergy and religious and catechists in mission territories

Tuesday, 12 September 2006

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - On Monday 11 September at the Seminar organised by the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples CEP for Bishops appointed in the past two years, CEP secretary, Archbishop Robert Sarah, spoke about the Congregation’s activity to guarantee clergy and religious and catechists in mission territories the best formation and education, involving its Colleges in Rome and also at institutes and Seminaries in other countries affiliated with the Congregation’s Pontifical Urban University.
First of all Archbishop Sarah presented the CEP Colleges in Rome “concerned with the scientific and spiritual formation of the clergy”. In 1622 when it was founded the Congregation de Propaganda Fide opened a Propaganda Fide College to train priests for missionary work. Pope Urban VIII in 1627 established the nature, finality and aims of the College to prepare diocesan priests “to proclaim and defend the Catholic faith all over the world”. Once trained the priests returned to their own countries to serve the Church there. “From the beginning Propaganda Fide insisted on good intellectual and spiritual formation and preparation for local clergy” said Archbishop Sarah. The College included a university for the humanistic philosophical, theological and missionary formation of priests and seminarians from the mission territories under Propaganda Fide and those under the Congregation for the Eastern Churches. “This college was the first and for three centuries the only one dedicated exclusively to the formation of local clergy in mission territories” the Archbishop said. In 1927 Pius XI moved the Urban University from Piazza di Spagna to where it is today on the Gianicolo Hill.
In the second half of the 20th century XX as missionary work expanded the Congregation of Propaganda Fide opened two more colleges to flank Urban College in the formation of priests from mission territories: the Pontificio Collegio di San Pietro Apostolo (1946) and the Pontificio Collegio di San Paolo Apostolo (1960). In the 1970s two more centres were opened Collegio Mater Ecclesiae at Castel Gandolfo for the formation of Catechists, and Foyer Paolo VI on the campus Urban University campus for the formation of women religious from mission territories. In 2005-2006 the catechists studying at Collegio Mater Ecclesiae were moved to the Collegio San Francesco d’Assisi in Via di Torre Rossa, Rome.
Urban College is considered the CEP’s ‘major seminary”. For the academic year 2005/2006 it accepted 98 seminarians and 49 other students of Vietnamese and Chinese nationality from the Centro Culturale Asiatico. The Collegio San Pietro Apostolo accepted 152 student priests and Collegio San Paolo Apostolo 186. In addition there are 60 catechists at the Collegio San Francesco d’Assisi and 80 women religious at the Foyer Paolo VI, making a total 621 students from 500 different dioceses in 100 different countries. The continents most represented are Africa and Asia, but there are also students from Oceania, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe.
With regard to the institutes and seminaries in mission territories affiliated with the Pontifical Urban College and therefore with the (Propaganda Fide) today, the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Archbishop Sarah said the total number today is 89: 54 in Africa, 27 in Asia, 3 in America, 3 in Europe and 2 in Australia-Oceania. Reflecting on the importance of Bishop’s role with regard to seminary life, Archbishop Sarah stressed collaboration to organise inter-diocesan and national seminars, the necessity of organising structures for academic formation, efforts to ensure that formators and teachers have adequate preparation, attention for vocational discernment. Archbishop Sarah ended by entrusting to the pastoral concern of the Bishops “this important task of the formation of seminarians”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 12/9/2006; Righe 54 - Parole 738)


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