The Nossa Senhora da Conceição Seminary, in Braga, bears the marks of 100 years of history, which is celebrated this Thursday.
And, if one day it served as a home for dozens of young people, today the Minor Seminary is the “roof” for eight students coming from the various archpriests of the Archdiocese. They are high school students who find the Nossa Senhora da Conceição Seminary the right place where they can work on their “seed of faith”.
“The seminary is this house where the seed develops”, begins explaining the rector of the institution, Canon Mário Martins.
“There is no young person who arrives at the “seminary house” with the seed fully developed, with the fruit already given or to be given”, adds the priest, who was also a student at the Minor Seminary in the late 1990s.
For the official, the reduced number of seminarians, which has persisted over the last decade, has nothing to do with the idea of a lack of vocations.
“We cannot say that there is a crisis in vocations, because vocations exist”, guarantees Mário Martins, who remembers that “it is all of us, as the Church, who have to commit more to this issue”, he warns.
We need to “talk more about the issue, pray more for vocations and understand the need and importance of helping young people find their way to happiness”, he argues. Because, he adds, “if a young man’s vocation is the priesthood, and it is what will make him happy, we must help him to serve better”.
For Mário Martins, this is not an exclusive task for the Church, but for everyone, including the community: “The Church, as well as society, will have to find ways of interacting with young people so that they also feel involved and committed. ”
“It is always possible to do more for young people”, he adds.
“In general, young people are altruistic and, when involved, they show this as in the World Youth Days and in so many volunteer projects”, points out the rector of the Braga Minor Seminary for whom youth is not “tomorrow”, but the “now of the church”.
Since 1924, the Braga Minor Seminary has welcomed 9 thousand students from the Archdiocese of Braga and the Diocese of Viana do Castelo. About 1500 followed the priesthood.
“The others (who were not ordained) were performing a beautiful service to society”, emphasizes the priest, remembering that it was “due to the training they were able to receive here”.
“Over these hundred years, the seminary has played a very important social role”, recalls the director of the institution, highlighting the “potential that the seminary meant and means for society and the current Church”.
The institution’s role in training young people was recognized by the Presidency of the Republic, which awarded the Seminário de Nossa Senhora da Conceição the Order of Merit in Public Instruction on the occasion of its 90th anniversary.
A decade later, the Braga Seminary marks its centenary with a program that kicks off, this Thursday, the institution’s anniversary, with a solemn opening session of the celebrations at 6:30 pm at Espaço Vita.
The festive program continues on Sunday, November 17th, at 3pm with a Concert by the Capella Ocellum Duri Choir, at Braga Cathedral. This is followed, at 5:30 pm, by the celebration of the Eucharist in the Chapel of the Imaculada, in the Seminary building, presided over by the Archbishop of Braga, Dom José Cordeiro.
The celebrations of the institution’s 100th anniversary will extend until November 2025, when a book about the Seminary’s 100th anniversary will be released.
Source: rr.sapo.pt
