Extension to commit more than $3 million to seminarian education in FY 2010

Catholic Church Extension Society will award $3,058,275 in grants in FY 2010, a significant increase from recent years, to help educate 509 seminarians from America's most underfunded dioceses. The 104-year-old national organization is responding not only to Pope Benedict XVI's "Year for Priests" designation, but to the reality that diocesan endowments for seminarian education have shrunk during the current economic downturn, even as the number of Catholics in poor and isolated regions of the country is growing.

Seminarian education is usually one of the largest expenses for many of America's 195 dioceses. The Church's 84 "mission dioceses," which comprise the most impoverished and remote areas of the country, spend an average of $30,000 a year per seminarian to train them in philosophy, theology, spirituality and religious life, as well as to prepare future priests for ordination. Costs include tuition, room and board, books and health insurance.

The greatest rate of Catholic population growth is occurring within mission dioceses, primarily in the Southern and Western United States where much of Catholic Extension's funding is directed. Growth since 1990 has ranged from 45 percent in Arkansas to 111 percent in Nevada.

"Educating the next generation of Catholic leadership is critical, especially for those areas of the country where the Catholic population is growing yet parishes and residential pastoral ministers are few," said Joseph Boland, Grants Director for Catholic Extension. "Catholic Extension's contributions will enable our young people to most effectively answer God's call to service in these poor and isolated areas where the future of the Church is unfolding."

The grants will educate an estimated 15 percent of America's seminarians from 32 geographically diverse dioceses -- from Juneau, Alaska, to Amarillo, Texas, to Fargo, North Dakota. Grants will also be given to dioceses in the Samoan Islands and Puerto Rico, as well as to fund the seminary program of the Archdiocese of Military Services.

Catholic Extension is additionally committed to supporting "Year for Priests" which Pope Benedict opened on June 19, 2009--the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the day of sanctification of priests. The Pope also marked the occasion by naming St. John Vianney the Universal Patron of Priests; 2009 was the 150th anniversary of his death. The year will close during a World Meeting of Priests in St. Peter's Square in Rome on June 19, 2010.