Rector’s message for the beginning of the academic year 2024-2025
Dear Friends
With each new beginning, the face of the Seminary is reconfigured and enriched. This is the experience we are joyfully experiencing in these early days of the 2024-2025 academic year with the arrival of 38 new seminarians and 14 new student priests. What’s more, there are also new members among the formators!
Welcome Fathers Jorge Eduardo García, LC, Andrew LaBudde, LC, Carl Kuss, LC and Juan Gerardo Limón, LC to our College! We are happy that they can now form part of this big family that is Mater Ecclesiae. Thus, for course 24-25, our formation community will consist of, in all, 103 seminarians and 47 priests, from 22 nations. We thank God for this and ask for your prayers.
It is necessary, however, to acknowledge the work of those who have gone before us. That is why I take this opportunity to thank the formators who have concluded their service among us. Especially to dear Father Enrique Tapia, LC who, for a good six years, wisely led us as rector, leaving us an important educational and institutional legacy. May God reward her for all her dedication and accompany her in her new pastoral service. Likewise, we thank Fathers José Meléndez, LC and Brian Wilson, LC. Thank you for your wisdom, example and counsel.
Before concluding, I would like to express from the bottom of my heart my gratitude to the entire team of formators, collaborators and the seminarians for the welcome they have given me upon assuming the assignment of rector. This is a task of service in which I hope to have the support of everyone to carry out this mission. For this I count on the charity of your prayers.
Finally, in this very special year for Jubilee 2025, we want to invoke in a special way God’s blessing for all benefactors and friends of Mater Ecclesiae who, with their prayers and material contributions, support priestly vocations. May God reward everyone abundantly for your generosity. You are in our prayers!
We invoke the Blessed Virgin Mary, the sweet Mother of the Church, that she may accompany and protect all of us in this new formation journey 2024-2025.
Fr. Pierre Salabert, L.C. Rector