Training Environment

One of the great gifts that comes from training in an international centre is being able to live with people from different cultures. Each culture is a gift, each culture enriches, and thinking of a priest who must live with people of different kinds, with diverse needs, enriches a lot.

Enculturalization makes you live with people who think differently from you, with people who have realities that have allowed each of them to go out and get the best version of them. It has allowed each one of us to grow because opening up to others, learning from others, is invaluable for human formation.

An important element in the priestly formation and that helps a lot to the integration, is the sharing in the sport area. Playing a collective sport allows us to realize that my action has repercussions for the whole team. Thinking about community life, thinking about these young people who will be in a parish tomorrow, inserted in a very concrete ecclesial reality, knowing how they can join in by putting their great grain of sand in favor of others, is something important. Playing as a team, favors my action because we know that my participation influences others, that it is not irrelevant. That leads me to make an effort, that leads me to give the best of me, this also leads me to respect the skills and qualities of each one and we learn to give the best of us in favor of others. This allows one to open up without fear of showing others what one is like. A seminarian who presents himself in this way in the context of the enculturation he lives in the College grows enormously.

Enculturalization also allows us to increase friendship. Knowing how to understand the other, knowing how to strengthen ties. And we see it throughout the history of Mater Ecclesiae, how these bonds are strengthened between people from different continents, even from different rites within the Catholic Church, where we share the same treasure and the great treasure of faith.

These elements that have an impact on a future priesthood allow these young men and women and allow us, as formators, to offer an enrichment that goes beyond a classroom, that goes beyond theoretical knowledge, that even enriches these moments of union with God our Lord.