Charlotte Catholic Diocese opens $20M college seminary as church membership soars
With a blessing and the sprinkling of Holy Water, Charlotte Catholic Bishop Peter Jugis on Tuesday helped to formally open a $20 million college seminary for prospective priests to serve a soaring Catholic population from Charlotte to the mountains.
St. Joseph College Seminary, surrounded by stands of poplar and other trees on its 86 acres in Mount Holly, houses the only seminary program of its kind from Washington, D.C., to Miami, diocesan officials said.
“St. Joseph is an extraordinary milestone for our diocese and for the Charlotte region,” Jugis said. “It’s a sacred place where those who feel called to serve God can be nurtured and grounded in faith that will carry throughout their lives.”
The seminary features Gothic architecture, 40 10-foot-by-10-foot dorm rooms, a chapel and a meditative cloister walk, along with 30,000 square feet of living and learning space.
Two Great Dane puppies, Bocca and Lupo (Italian for “Mouth” and “Wolf”), also live in the two-floor seminary.
The building’s brickwork was inspired by nearby Belmont Abbey, where in 1876 Benedictine monks planted Catholicism’s roots in Western North Carolina, diocesan officials said.
“This used to be mission territory,” Father Patrick Winslow, vicar general and chancellor of the diocese, said at Tuesday’s event.
The diocese now has 92 parishes and missions in 46 Western North Carolina counties.
In the past decade, the Catholic population has mushroomed by double digits, to more than 400,000, according to the diocese.
Private donations fund seminary
Donors gave $15.5 million toward the seminary, with fundraising ongoing, diocesan officials said.
The seminary program opened four years ago at St. Ann Catholic Church in Charlotte. Seminarians lived in a former convent there and in nearby available dwellings. Enrollment has since tripled, from eight students to 27 now in residence, according to the diocese.
The young men hail from across the diocese — Arden, Boone, Charlotte, Forest City, Gastonia, Huntersville, Lenoir and Salisbury.
They live in silence from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., including during the communal breakfast, ”then it’s non-stop chattering” the other 12 hours, Father Matthew Buettner, spiritual director at the seminary, quipped on a media tour Tuesday.
“We’re all young men,” seminarian Clement Akerblom said. “The desire of every young person is to give everything.” And that’s his path in serving God, he said.
Once the men graduate from the program, most will attend major seminaries elsewhere, to pursue graduate degrees in theology and receive more specific training, according to the diocese. Then they will return here to be ordained as priests for the Charlotte diocese.
At Tuesday’s opening ceremony, more than two dozen seminarians adhered to social-distancing recommendations by standing six feet apart. They punctuated Jugis’s remarks by singing the seminary’s Latin fight song, “Salve Pater.” The hymn honors St. Joseph as the patron of the college.
Fr. Matthew Kauth, the rector at St. Joseph, noted how the diocese broke ground on the seminary in the middle of a tropical storm two years ago and is opening it in the middle of a pandemic. “Because the work of the Church goes on amid any challenges,” he said.
Bishop prioritizes training of priests
Since being ordained bishop in 2003, Jugis said he has made increasing the number of priests a priority.
Since its founding in 1972, the diocese has seen that number grow by 76 percent, according to diocesan figures.
The diocese has 41 men in various stages of becoming priests, including the ones in its seminary program and those who are attending major seminaries elsewhere. The number stood at 16 four years ago, officials said.
Yet the number of Catholics has grown by 900 percent, officials said, leading to large parishes and a reliance on priests from elsewhere.
“Though we’ve been blessed with many good and holy priests, we need more to meet the needs of our rapidly growing flock,” Jugis said in a statement Tuesday. “So it is essential that we make every effort to help form young men to be ready to serve in our parishes when the time comes.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2020 at 2:14 PM.