Boom: Baltimore welcomes largest seminary class in almost 40 years

“God is calling all of us to be saints. I want to pursue sainthood through my vocation to the priesthood.”

From The Catholic Review: 

The many challenges the Catholic Church has faced in recent years with the clergy sexual abuse crisis didn’t deter Samuel Huffer from answering the call to religious life.

“It made me want to be a priest even more,” said Huffer, an 18-year-old college seminarian at St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C., who is studying to become a priest for the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

“We need good, holy priests,” Huffer explained. “God is calling all of us to be saints. I want to pursue sainthood through my vocation to the priesthood.”

Huffer, a homeschooled parishioner of St. Peter the Apostle in Libertytown who has thought about becoming a priest since age 12, said he was inspired by the good priests he met at his parish and around the archdiocese at events such as the Quo Vadis vocations camps for boys.

“All the priests I’ve encountered have been amazing,” the former altar server said.

Father Steven Roth, vocations director for the archdiocese, said Huffer’s attitude is typical among the 17 men accepted into the newest seminarian class, the largest in the archdiocese in at least 36 years.

The addition of 17 new seminarians brings the total number studying for the archdiocese to 52.

Although people struggle to understand the church’s past mistakes, Father Roth said, they still want priests in their lives. Seminarians recognize that and want to give their lives in service.

“The men we see stepping forward want to ensure that there is a future generation of great priests like we have now,” Father Roth said.

Read more. And check out a radio interview on the subject here.