Vocations crisis leads the great French seminary of St Sulpice into merger
Paris: Merger of the Carmelite Seminary and the Saint-Sulpice Seminary
In its edition dated today, the daily newspaper La Croix reports on the merger of the Carmelite Seminary and the Saint-Sulpice Seminary in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine department). The Carmelite Seminary is slated to close, which will entail the transfer of its seminarians to the Issy Seminary.
The two seminaries serve somewhat different purposes: while one is a place of formal training, where seminarians live alongside other students of the Catholic Institute of Paris (ICP), the other is a place of community life. The small number of students (around thirty at the Carmelite Seminary, about twenty in Issy) led to this merger, which had been under consideration for about ten years and was recently announced by the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF). The merger is to be effective in 2026. However, while community life will take place at the Saint-Sulpice Seminary, the seminarians will go to the Catholic Institute of Paris (ICP) for their intellectual formation.
The Carmelite Seminary was founded in 1919 and is located within the Catholic Institute of Paris (ICP) in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Along with the Issy Seminary, it represents the Sulpician influence on the formation of priests.
16 ordinations in the Archdiocese in 2025, but just 6 in 2024.
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