The boy who bypassed papal security in 2013 to embrace Pope Francis is now a seminarian. It was at Rio de Janeiro’s World Youth Day (WYD) that nine-year old Nathan de Brito came to fame. He’s the boy who ran to hug the pope and said he wanted to be a priest. “At that moment Read more
A US seminarian is believed to have drowned after he saved the life of a woman who fell into a river. Brian Bergkamp, a seminarian from the diocese of Wichita, went to the aid of a woman who fell into the Arkansas River on July 9. Mr Bergkamp, 24, was among five people travelling in Read more
A former Manchester United footballer has started his studies towards the priesthood. Former Northern Ireland international Phil Mulryne, 34, has enrolled at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. During his time as a footballer Mulryne dated a model, Nicola Chapman. He was once sent home from the Northern Ireland squad in 2005 after breaking a Read more
Pope Francis considered abandoning his priestly vocation after being “dazzled” by a young woman he met at an uncle’s wedding while he was a seminarian. He revealed the experience last year in a book-length dialogue with a rabbi, which will be published in English in May. “I was surprised by her beauty, her intellectual brilliance…and, Read more
Britain’s senior Catholic clergyman, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has stepped down after three priests and a former priest accused him of inappropriate behaviour towards them in the 1980s. The four, from the cardinal’s archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, complained to apostolic nuncio Archbishop Antonio Mennini days before Pope Benedict’s unexpected resignation. The allegations were then Read more
Jesuit seminarian, Joseph Hoover (top centre) was sentenced, Monday, to six days in a county jail work program and two years court probation in the first successful case relating to the Occupy Oakland movement. Hoover was found guilty of a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a thoroughfare during a violent demonstration in January that resulted in the arrests Read more
The National Seminary in New Zealand could be at full capacity next year. The Auckland Catholic Newspaper, The New Zealand Catholic, reports that although indications for student numbers for 2012 are very good, some prospective seminarians are still working through the admissions process. Final numbers will be known only when seminarians actually arrive next year. The Read more