Mangaluru: The St Joseph Inter-Diocesan Seminary day celebration was held on December 6 at the Seminary Grounds with a cultural extravaganza presented by the seminarians in the Kannada, English, Konkani, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi languages.
Fr Joseph Martis welcomed the Chairman of the seminary Board and the new Bishop of the Mangalore Diocese, Most Rev Dr Peter Paul Saldanha and Bishop Emeritus Most Rev Dr Aloysius Paul D’Souza, with saplings.
Fr Joseph Martis, Rector of St Joseph’s Inter-Diocesan seminary, in his annual report spoke about his vision of the seminary, staff members and their services, priestly ordinations of the year, various aspects of formation viz. Pastoral and Missionary formation, Human Formation, Spiritual Formation, Intellectual Formation and other activities of the seminary formation.
In his address, Bishop Peter Paul shared his personal experience of how the seminarian formation helped him become a Bishop. He then expressed his desire to become a Saint and spoke about various aspects of formation and its importance in the life of a priest. He emphasized the role of laity especially the families in helping the formation of seminarians. Many times a diocesan priest feels lonely after a parish celebration; therefore the family members must support their priests especially when they fall sick.
Many priests, religious, seminarians, candidates, guests and laity who were present, witnessed the multilingual cultural programme based on various themes like women empowerment, importance of confession, importance family life, prophetic role of a priest in the society, presented in the formats of drama, role plays, skits, mime shows, radium shows, dances etc.
Msgr Maxim Noronha presided over the Eucharistic Celebration and Fr Jenson Professor St Joseph’s Seminary preached the homily.
The Bishop then felicitated Br Jeevan D’Souza who secured the first rank in BSW and Br Joel Monteiro secured the second Rank in BSW during the programme.
There are 234 seminarians from all over India undergo priestly formation in different stages, out of which 201 seminarians are residents of the seminary. There are 18 resident professors and 22 visiting professors involved in the Seminary formation. Bishop Peter Paul is the 47th Bishop who studied in this seminary.
