Deacons Michael Maloney and Joseph Wappes will be ordained to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on May 25 with 11 other men. Their formation was unique among the class as they studied at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
About half of the U.S. seminarians and priests living at the Pontifical North American College and the Casa Santa Maria in Rome have left the locked-down city, the rector said.
He describes his discernment process as “a slow, gradual one” in which he has gone from “part-time disciple to full-time disciple, and realizing that God’s dreams and plans were far greater than what I could have dreamed up myself.”
When Archbishop Bernard Hebda — then Father Hebda — was asked by his bishop in 1996 to move to Rome to work on the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, he didn’t want to go. Despite a degree in canon law and experience living in Rome while studying at the Pontifical North American College, the priest was happy where he was: Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh.
My eager naiveté for my first real missionary experience in this land of blatant religious persecution conjured up images of the struggles and subsequent successes of St. Francis Xavier, Matteo Ricci, and other great missionaries to the East. Like them, we would face opposition by both the culture and the government.
Last summer I decided to teach English in China with the Maryknoll Missionaries and six other seminarians as my summer apostolic work for the Pontifical North American College, where I currently reside for major seminary studies.
My experiences of the Church in China