Utterly catastrophic decline in vocations in largest diocese in Europe

 Delpini's announcement. Milan sends seminarians to live in the parish for a year

The Archbishop's decision concerns third year theology. They will live together in small groups, attending the seminary for lessons. In addition to the trainers as a reference also a family

The third year of the seminary course "will be lived by living in parishes in small groups of seminarians and attending the seminary daily for lessons and formative moments". This was announced by the Archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, at the end of the Chrism Mass celebrated yesterday in the Cathedral, when he gave news of the "Reconfiguration of the community life of the Seminary", which will be introduced on an experimental basis for a three-year period starting next September.

There are numerous novelties. As stated in the document prepared by the Seminary's formators, discussed with the Milan Bishops' Council and approved by Delpini, for Third Theology seminarians (or "first year of the Configuration Stage") "it is considered important to identify a married couple or family that can become a point of reference for the group of seminarians. The persons, identified by the local presbyters, are to be available for constant comparison, helping and encouraging reinterpretation and formation in the domestic and fraternal dimension of life".

By living the Third Year of Theology in parishes in small groups of three or four people, the seminarians will be able to face the path of formation "more in contact with the ordinary life of the parish communities and with the various components of the people of God," emphasises a note issued by the diocese. In this way, the document of the formators explains, it will be possible to foster and consolidate "a closer comparison and reciprocity with other forms of vocation - such as consecrated life and marriage - that can interact more regularly and immediately with the daily life of the seminarians".

Among the other main novelties: "the life of all the seminarians", in the Seminary premises in Venegono Inferiore, "will be concentrated in the lot of the current Biennium", the first two years of the path to the priesthood, "with spaces and times shared by all and others proper to each formative stage". In addition: "the clerical 'vesting'", currently scheduled at the beginning of the third year, "will be postponed to the moment of the diaconal ordination, that is, at the beginning of the sixth and final year, as indicated by the discipline of the universal Church and the Italian Bishops' Conference on the subject and as is already the case in most Italian seminaries", the diocesan note adds.

There are many reasons for this reconfiguration. It was certainly affected by 'the confirmation, for the third year in a row, of a numerically reduced and steadily decreasing number of admissions'. In the seminary year 2013-14, the document of the formators states, there were a total of 150 seminarians, which became 139 in the year 2017-18 and 78 in the year 2022-23. There were 24 admissions in 2017, 19 in 2018, 18 in 2019, 16 in 2020, 11 in 2021 and 6 in 2022.

Increasingly small numbers, therefore, housed in the monumental location built by Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, whose "disproportion" also has an impact on the educational level, as well as on the economic-ethical one. Bringing all the seminarians to the "location" of the Biennium will therefore make "the attendance-expenditure-graduation ratio more proportionate". But the main motivation for each choice, Delpini reiterated, "is and will remain to encourage, accompany and instruct some young men of the diocese in discernment and docility to the Spirit".

Returning to the Third Year of Theology seminarians: living in the parishes will help them "cultivate the missionary style of fraternal life" and, the document of the formators goes on to say, "to expand and stimulate a critical, interested and realistic look at today's cultural, social and ecclesial condition". Each group will have to give itself a common rule of life, which contains and integrates shared daily liturgy, personal prayer and meditation, prayer in common, time for study, rest, management of the house, the timetable, the weekly calendar.

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