Press Releases
Seminary Receives $1m
Lynches Back Weston Focus
By Stephanie V. Siek, Globe Staff December 8, 2005
Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston has received a $1 million grant from one of the Boston area’s most prominent charitable foundations. It is the largest single grant from a foundation in the seminary’s 41-year history.
The grant, awarded in October by The Lynch Foundation, will endow a chair in field education at the Roman Catholic seminary. It will also pay for workshops in pastoral studies and the renovation of meeting rooms on the campus, located at 558 South Ave.
“We’re grateful for their support and their approval of what we’re doing. It’s a wonderful local foundation, and it’s a vote of confidence in what we’re doing,” said Vincent Shea, the seminary’s director of development.
The Lynch Foundation’s executive director, Kathryn M. Everett, said she and founders Carolyn and Peter Lynch were attracted to the seminary’s specialization on training older candidates for the priesthood, people who wanted to apply their experience in the professional world as religious leaders.
The seminary is one of only three in the United States that accepts applicants who are switching from secular careers. This year, 64 seminarians are enrolled, representing 33 dioceses and two religious orders. Most of them are between the ages of 30 and 60, in contrast to younger seminarians who are usually fresh from college. Shea said their former professions run the gamut from teachers and school superintendents to military officers and doctors.
The seminary sends graduates … there were 14 last year … to parishes all over the world. Seminarians, who live in dorm rooms on the campus, spend four years learning about church history, theology, and policy.
“When they’re not in the classroom, they’re in the church. There’s a spiritual component … if they’re going to be priests, they have to have a relationship with God,” said Shea.
During their upperclass years, the men spend weekends and summers in intern-like roles at churches, acquiring experience in parish administration and ministering to congregants. They also gain ministering skills visiting hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons.
The foundation sees the field studies program as vital to the seminarians’ training, because it helps them learn about the non-sacramental aspects of their ministry, including comforting a grieving spouse, helping a parishioner with a family crisis such as a drug problem, and addressing issues related to sexuality, said Everett.
The foundation’s founders, Peter Lynch, the Fidelity Investments guru, and his wife, Carolyn, are Roman Catholics who have donated to a number of causes affiliated with the church, including the Boston College School of Education, which is named for them. Carolyn Lynch is president of the family foundation; Peter Lynch chairs the Inner City Schools Foundation.
They’ve also donated to a number of nonreligious causes such as a planned skateboarding park under the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston and youth service organization City Year.
