The Archdiocese of Madrid and its suffragan diocese of Alcalá de Henares (Spain) have made public a statement in which they announce a collaboration agreement between both ecclesiastical constituencies for the joint training of candidates for the priesthood.
The Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal José Cobo, and the Bishop of the Complutense see, Mons. Antonio Prieto, have reached this decision “to begin a path of collaboration in the priestly formation of their seminarians” after having consulted “their respective presbyteral councils.
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The joint statement states that this collaboration is carried out “in the context of the development process of the National Plan for Priestly Formation” and coincides with the guidelines promoted by the Vatican after the apostolic visit made to the Spanish seminaries.
Between January and March 2023, two Uruguayan prelates, the Bishop of Salto, Mons. Arturo Fajardo, and that of Maldonado-Punta del Este-Minas, Mons. Milton Luis Tróccoli, visited the diocesan training centers for Spanish priests, after which all Spanish bishops were summoned to a meeting with Pope Francis in Rome last November.
As a result of that extraordinary meeting with Pope Francis, the Spanish Episcopal Conference created a commission made up of eight rectors of major seminaries coordinated by Mons. Jesús Vidal, Auxiliary Bishop of Madrid and president of the Episcopal Subcommittee for Seminaries.
The mission of this commission is to apply the document Criteria for updating initial priestly formation in the Major Seminaries of the particular Churches that make up the Spanish Episcopal Conference delivered by the Dicastery for the Clergy and prepared after the apostolic visit.
According to the agreement reached, “the formative community of the propaedeutic stage would have its headquarters in the Seminary of the Santos Niño Justo y Pastor, in Alcalá de Henares”, while “the functioning of the disciplic and formative stages continue under study and would have their headquarters in the Conciliar Seminary of Madrid.”
According to both dioceses, “this collaboration will allow, safeguarding the identity of each presbytery, for the seminarians to experience mutual enrichment, by sharing formation in sufficient and proportionate communities of young people in the same formative stages.”
The collaboration between the Archdiocese of Madrid and the Diocese of Alcalá de Henares represents the second agreement of these characteristics in Spain after the one announced last May by the Archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela with its suffragans of Tui-Vigo and Mondoñedo-Ferrol .
The Catholic Church in Spain has 86 seminaries erected, distributed in 55 formation houses, which means that not all seminaries have an individualized training structure. For example, in Catalonia, seven dioceses send their seminarians to the same study center.
For the 2023-2024 academic year in Spain, only 143 seminarians joined, bringing the total to 954. Last year, the number fell below 1,000 seminarians for the first time, although the downward trend has been confirmed for several decades.
Nicholas de Cardenas
Born in 1980, I am a Spanish husband and father and journalist with more than 20 years of experience in print and digital media, specializing in sociopolitical and religious information. I have worked for more than 10 years in defense of human rights and have accreditations in Journalism and Comprehensive Communication. Since July 2022, I have been a correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN Noticias in Spain, covering international events of the Catholic Church.