Welcome Home Class of 2016!

August 3, 2016
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On July 5th, the seminarians of the Class of 2016 arrived in Chicago after six-weeks in France, Italy and Spain. Thank you to everyone who offered their prayers and support for our seminarians and staff this summer! We especially thank our donors whose generous support helped us award $131,000 in scholarships to the Class of 2016.  Thank you!

To close the 2016 program, we share with you a reflection on the final week of the program by seminarian Thomas Willis of the Diocese of Worcester in Massachusetts:

“The Rome Experience is coming to a close. It’s an odd feeling.

“Yes, I’m eager to return to the relative conveniences and familiar locales of my home in the United States, but in the weeks I’ve spent in The Eternal City, it too has become a sort of second home to me. No, my knowledge of Italian did not improve even slightly. But I discovered the essence of the city in a way one cannot through a simple weekend visit.

“I know the churches and neighborhoods. I could answer tourists questions with a degree of accuracy (which is good, because the assumption seems to be that a man wearing the Roman collar knows every inch of the city). And more importantly, I have begun to understand what it means to be a truly Roman Catholic.”

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