House of Studies to close, vocations office and Hispanic ministry center to move

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – Changes in national guidelines for priestly formation led to closure of the diocesan House of Studies.

Holy Name of Jesus House of Studies at 51 Illinois St., where many seminarians have lived since 2007, is officially closing Aug. 31. The building is to be sold.

The Office for Vocations that ran the House is moving to the rectory of Our Lady of Providence Parish at St. Bernard Church, where Father Donato Infante III, office director, will be in residence. He said the House of Studies will cease to exist.

The diocesan Hispanic ministry center, also located at 51 Illinois St., is moving to St. Paul Cathedral’s building behind the rectory, said Father Hugo A. Cano, cathedral rector and Hispanic/Latino Ministry director. Bishop McManus had blessed Centro de Ministerio Hispano/Latino and cut the ribbon for its opening in September 2019.

Because of closings and mergers, the 51 Illinois Street building, once the rectory of Holy Name of Jesus Parish, is an asset of what is now St. Joseph and St. Stephen Parish.
“We’re looking to sell the building,” since it is no longer needed for the House of Studies, and the parish doesn’t need this property across the city, said Msgr. Robert K. Johnson, pastor.

He said they would not have planned to sell it if the diocese still needed it. Now the hope is to put money from an eventual sale towards paying off the parish’s debt to the diocese.

The House of Studies was founded in Holy Name’s rectory, with the agreement of Msgr. Joseph V. Sirois, then pastor, said Father James S. Mazzone, who was vocations director and in residence there. Father Mazzone was director of the House of Studies from then until 2019, when he became pastor of St. John, Guardian of Our Lady Parish in Clinton, where he still serves. Rent was not charged to the House of Studies; the vocations office was responsible for its upkeep, he said.

The House was supported primarily by Partners in Charity, as is the vocations office, Father Infante said.

Leaving 51 Illinois St. will affect the Hispanic ministry “because that was a place of encounter,” where people gathered for meetings, immigration information sessions, and “everything,” Father Cano said. Sometimes they interacted with Spanish-speaking seminarians there.

At St. Paul’s “we have to share classrooms” with the parish’s religious education program and pastoral ministries, and there will be one room for the Hispanic ministry office, he said.
One benefit is that the Hispanic community will be at the center of the diocese, with headquarters at the cathedral, he added. The community can use the cathedral and its cenacle.

“The important thing is that the spirit of evangelization and mission” doesn’t get lost, Father Cano said.

Father Infante said the House of Studies was a good location for seminarians from Worcester and other dioceses to live, especially those who needed to work on their English at nearby colleges, and that several took advantage of Assumption University’s tuition discount for seminarians.

Requirements for seminarian formation helped initiate the change.

Program of Priestly Formation, 6th edition, was developed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, and was promulgated on June 24, 2022, according to the website usccb.org.

The website says the PPF is “particular law in the Church in the United States” and a guide for forming men for the priesthood. It was released in accordance with the Holy See’s 2016 Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis.

 PPF has changes to improve seminarians’ formation, Father Infante said.

“First year college seminarians have a very specific program of formation focusing on spiritual and human formation that requires a dedicated person to oversee” it, he explained.
“I cannot do that alone ... It is my opinion that only a formation program with several priests on staff can fulfill” the requirements, Father Infante said.

Our Lady of Providence Seminary in Providence, Rhode Island, can meet the requirements, he said, as it has multiple priests on staff. Seminarians attend Providence College, Rhode Island College, and Community College of Rhode Island.

“Providence College ensures that the required classes are offered regularly and that seminarians can sign-up early to ensure they are in the right classes in the right sequence, and the seminary has a larger community with multiple sending dioceses,” he said, in highlighting some of the requirements. “Like Assumption did for us, Providence College has a similar tuition discount for seminarians.”

Father Infante said that, two years ago, he and Bishop McManus discussed sending the Worcester diocese’s college seminarians to Our Lady of Providence Seminary. But since those men were grandfathered in under the older formation program, the diocese waited to see whether the House of Studies could meet the new requirements.

Those men graduated or left, and last year there was only one in Worcester’s program, according to Father Infante.

So that this seminarian would not be alone, Father Infante proposed having other young men live there in community, as an extension of the House of Studies, to which they would contribute financially and socially. They did not have to be discerning a priestly vocation but were there for spiritual growth and to be a witness to other young adults.

The seminarian left the House due to his class schedule, but “we had to honor the commitment” to the four other men who had arranged to live there that year, Father Infante said.

Despite the positive experiences of this experiment, he said, his work was hindered by interruptions from visitors and people coming to work on the house. He suggested that his office be based at a parish and that any new men in discernment go to a fully staffed college seminary.

Several priests invited him to their parishes, and moving to Our Lady of Providence “made the most sense,” he said. He has a “well-established working relationship” with the pastor, Father Jonathan J. Slavinskas. The rectory is centrally located, which is helpful since Father Infante is also chaplain at St. Paul Diocesan Jr./Sr. High School, visits college campuses regularly and hopes to increase campus outreach. He said Our Lady of Providence will receive a stipend from his budget for housing him.

“Most important is the fraternal benefit … to have a fellow brother priest living with me, to share in prayer” and eat together, Father Slavinskas said. “Certainly, his presence in the parish has been very well received,” he added, noting that Father Infante has celebrated Masses there.

He said Father Infante has a suite in the rectory and is welcome to use other rooms there and in the church building.

The move is an opportunity to “re-think how we do things,” Father Infante said. Vocation dinners (Vianney Dinners) might be held in different places in the diocese to draw people who wouldn’t drive to Worcester. He recalled Jesus’ words, “Behold, I make all things new,” and said this is a “beautiful opportunity” for seminarians’ formation, vocational outreach and his high school and college ministry.