Former students of a major seminary in Nagpur have thanked Dominican priests for training them intellectually and spiritually to serve in Church missions across India.

Some 200 alumni of St. Charles Seminary gathered in Nagpur Nov 4-5 to mark the 50 years of the Dominicans managing the seminary.

Irish Friars of the Order of Preachers (commonly known as Dominicans) came to the central Indian city in 1959 at the invitation of the then local prelate, Archbishop Eugene D’Souza.

Hundreds of nuns and lay people joined the former students in the jubilee programs. The seminary conducted a symposium on priesthood on the opening day since the jubilee coincided with the Year of Priests.

The seminary also launched its website www.stcharles.in on the occasion.

Archbishop Abraham Viruthakulangara of Nagpur, who led the jubilee opening Mass, noted the seminary has produced hundreds of priests, ten of them bishops.

Archbishop Viruthakulangara was the first alumnus to become a bishop when he was appointed to head Khandwa diocese in neighboring Madhya Pradesh state in 1977, eight years after his priestly ordination.

Bishop Viruthakulangara commended the Dominican priests for their success in the “difficult task” of forming priests by their exemplary and transparent life. The prelate said he was proud and grateful to the Dominicans for teaching him discipline and the need to care for small things. “Though we did not realize then, I realize it now,” added the seminary’s current patron.

In the past 50 years, the seminary has trained 1,240 priests and taught philosophy to more than 2,000 students. It has now 223 students from 47 dioceses and five Religious congregations. A dozen nuns study theology in the seminary, staying in a nearby hostel.

Rector Dominican Father Dominic Mendonca pointed out Fransalian missioners set up the seminary in1851. However, its staff and students moved from place to place until 1898 when it found a permanent place, a red building on a hilltop now known as the Seminary Hill, a prominent picnic spot in Nagpur.

During the World War II, the missioners had to close the seminary and police occupied the building. In 1955, Archbishop D’Souza converted the red seminary building into a college. Four years later, the archbishop invited the Dominicans to build a new seminary building opposite the college.

Irish Dominican Father Noel Molloy, the longest serving staff, recalled initially students came from southern India. Now most of its students come from central and northern India. “Those days it was staffed by the Irish priests and now they are Indians,” said Father Molloy, who now works as the spiritual director for the students.

He said the seminary stresses pastoral formation, along with their spiritual, intellectual and extra-curricular preparations.

Father Tony D’Mello, a retired priest in Nagpur archdiocese, thanked the Dominicans for giving him “a good foundation” for intellectual formation and pastoral ministries.

“They had given us a sense of dedication and seriousness to studies,” he recalled and said the early Irish Dominicans were “very enthusiastic and practical” to learn Indian ways and languages.

Source: UCAN (Reported by Fr. F. M. Britto)

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