After two years below one thousand and seven since the last time it grew, the number of seminarians in Spain has experienced a striking increase this year, of 8.37%, and stands at 1,036, when last year remained at 956. A growth of 80 new seminarians that, for the Episcopal Conference, could be attributed to “the revitalization of the entire pastoral care of the Church” after the pandemicof which “the first fruits are now beginning to be perceived”; and to the celebration of World Youth Day last summer in Lisbon since these “extraordinary ecclesial events also tend to awaken in some boys a vocational concern towards the priesthood.”
The news of the growth occurs in a course in which the episcopate has the future of Spanish seminaries on the table, after the report prepared by the Dicastery for the Clergy fruit of the “apostolic visit” carried out by two Chilean bishops sent by the Pope and the face-to-face meeting that all the bishops held in the Vatican with Francis, to present this text. In fact, the Pontiff gave them a period of three years to adapt to the demands raised by the dicastery in the report, which have not been made public.
In fact, it is significant that the press release in which the data was made public specifies the number of seminarians who “belong to the conciliar seminaries”, those of the dioceses themselves, which are 825, compared to the 211 who “belong to the conciliar seminaries”. They form in the international missionary seminaries called Redemptoris Materbelonging to the Neocatechumenal Way, but canonically erected in the dioceses where they are present. One of the rumors that circulates in ecclesiastical circles is that The Vatican document calls for the suppression of these seminars.
In this way, 20% of Spanish seminarians, one in five, are linked to this ecclesial realityso a possible closure of the seminaries would force them to join the diocesan ones or continue their studies in other Redemptoris Mater seminaries open in other countries. The note explains that the little more than a thousand seminarians are distributed “between 67 conciliar seminaries and 14 Redemptoris Mater seminaries, some of which, in turn, are grouped together, resulting in a total of 56 formative communities.”
These 56 training centers, 25 are composed only of a conciliar seminary; 13 are made up of several seminaries that have been united into a single community; Also 13 are Redemptoris Mater seminaries with a community belonging to a single diocese; while 1 formative community brings together the Redemptoris Mater seminaries of two dioceses (Madrid and Alcalá de Henares); and 2 seminaries are canonically established as interdiocesan (Catalonia and Santiago de Compostela), grouping in each of them seminarians from various dioceses. To this we must add 2 other existing formative communities in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid) that welcome seminarians from various dioceses who are in the propaedeutic stage, which is the initial stage of the seminary.
Thus, the average number of seminarians in these 56 formative communities would be 18.5, a figure below the 20 to 25 that Pope Francis has considered as a minimum so that “the sense of community” can be experienced in the centers. A number that would even be lower in many of them if we take into account that the largest seminaries (such as Madrid, Toledo, Valencia, Seville, Cartagena or Córdoba) exceed 40 or 50 candidates for the priesthood. A reality that will force the mergers of seminaries that have already begun to take place (such as Madrid and Alcalá de Henares or that of several Galician dioceses), to multiply in the next two years, before the period marked by the Holy See expires.
For this 2024-2025 academic year, the total of new admissions in the Spanish dioceses amounts to 239 seminarians (the previous academic year there were 177), of which, 59 belong to the seminaries of the Neocatechumenal Way, and 180 to the conciliar seminaries. In contrast, the current course has begun with 86 fewer seminarians, who have abandoned the training process towards the ordained priesthood; 69 of which belong to the conciliar seminaries and 17 to the Redemptoris Mater. On the other hand, the number of total dropouts last year was 106 young people, that is, 20 more than this year. Last year, 85 new priests were ordained.
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