Before leaving Washington, I was able to visit the new Blessed Pope John Paul II Seminary with Father Dan Hennessey, our vocations director, who was with us attending the March for Life. Father Dan had expressed a desire to visit the new seminary and to greet Msgr. Robert Panke, who had been vocations director in Washington, but is now the rector of the seminary. I was also hoping to see a seminarian, Bobby Kilner, who is a CUA graduate and whose grandparents were on my Teams of Our Lady. As a young friar, I had a wonderful group of couples who were all distinguished by their very large families -- they all had nine children or more. There were a number of vocations that came out of that group, and now the grandson of one of those couples (who was also one of nine children) is in the seminary, and we are so pleased. So we got to visit the seminary which was dedicated last year in honor of Blessed Pope John Paul II. They have a relic there similar to the one we have here in Boston of the late pope.

Visit to Our Lady of Providence Seminary

Finally, yesterday (1/26), I visited Our Lady of Providence Seminary, where there are almost 30 seminarians. Father Christopher Mahar is the rector there and Bishop Robert Evans and a number of priests accompanied us. There are five young men studying for Boston there. It is our college seminary. Usually they take their classes at Providence College and everything else takes place at the seminary.