The journey of a vocation

By Michelle Martin
Staff Writer

As the number of active priests and seminarians in the United States has dropped over the past 40 years, so has the number of schools dedicated to their education and formation.

The Archdiocese of Chicago is home to the largest major theologate in the nation, University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary. It is also one of the few with seminary education available at the high school, college and post-graduate levels.

“It used to be much more common,” said Mary Gautier, a senior research assistant at Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research on the Apostalate, which issued a report on U.S. Seminaries least year. Now there are four free-standing high school seminaries in the country, two diocesan and two religious, and more college seminaries are closing their doors as well, she said.

“The formation process has changed,” she said. “Tracking someone from high school—a lot of kids can’t decide what they want to do this weekend, let alone the rest of their lives. … Now its more common for someone to stay in touch with a vocation director while they go off and get a college education.”

While a relatively small percentage of students at Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, the archdiocese’s high school seminary, will pursue further priestly formation, and few of the seminarians approaching ordination at Mundelein attended all three levels of seminary, students and administrators said they see value in offering young men the opportunity.

“Symbolically, it shows the importance we place on vocations, that we devote so much time and resources to it,” said Father James Presta, rector at St. Joseph College Seminary. On a practical level, it gives young men at various age levels an opportunity to explore whether they have a vocation to the priesthood, he said.

That’s one reason the archdiocese has been so successful with it’s InSearch program for post-college men and its several houses of formation, said Father Thomas Baima, provost at Mundelein Seminary.

“You have to be ready to accompany men when they start asking the question about whether they are called to the priesthood,” he said

Following are profiles of students at each level of the seminary.

Archbishop Quigley
Preparatory Seminary
When it came to finding a high school. Quigley was not Brad Zamora’s first choice. Zamora, a 16-year-old junior from the Pilsen neighborhood, wanted to attend Whitney Young, one of Chicago’s top public magnet high schools. But he was placed on the waiting list. Since he liked the small classes and the close-knit atmosphere he saw at Quigley open houses and shadow days—as well as the downtown location and the landmark Gothic-style building—he decided to go there.
He’s never looked back.
“It’s like a second family,” said Zamora, a graduate of St. Barbara School (Throop Street). “There are a lot of days I’m here until 5 o’clock, just talking to people.”
He’s also a student moderator of the Student Cenacle prayer group and active in the Classics and Polish Club. In February, much of his time went into preparing for his role as Nicely Nicely in the school’s production of “Guys and Dolls,” an activity that he likes, in part, because it includes girls from nearby schools.
Quigley students are encouraged to develop social relationships with young men and women, said the rector, Father Peter Snieg. To enroll, young men must be baptized Catholic, have an affiliation to a parish, and be open to considering the priesthood as a vocation. They don’t have to intend to become priests.
Generally, about 10 percent go on to college seminary, and about 5 percent to major seminary, Snieg said.
Talk of priesthood comes up most often in weekly formation meetings, said Zamora.
“People talk about it, but it’s not like it comes up in chemistry class,” he said. “It’s not like 2x plus 3y means you’re going to be a priest from Quigley.”
Quigley’s 218 students spend more time in prayer and in spiritual formation than those at most Catholic schools, and they have more of an opportunity to interact with the priests that serve on the faculty.
That interaction has led Zamora, who hopes to become a teacher, to consider the priesthood more seriously.
“When I came here, I was like, the priesthood—that’s a nice idea, but it’s not for me,” he said. “Last year, I started really considering whether I had a vocation to the priesthood. As I I’ve gotten to know the priests here, I can see how they make a difference in people’s lives. That’s cool to think about.”
Now Zamora, one of five children in his family, plans to apply to St. Joseph College Seminary.

St. Joseph College Seminary
Mario Borha has been dedicated to Mary since before he was born.
Of course, his mother—who had suffered several miscarriages before carrying him to term—didn’t tell him that until last year, said the 19-year-old senior at St. Joseph College Seminary.
Borha, who grew up in St. Columbanus Parish on the South Side, entered St. Joseph at 15 years old after starting at Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary at 11. Four years later, he will graduate from Loyola University Chicago with a master’s degree in math, along with a bachelor’s degree in math with a minor in philosophy. All St. Joseph students—56 of them this year, with 40 studying for the Archdiocese of Chicago and the rest for two religious communities and four other dioceses—do their academic work at Loyola University Chicago while they have their formation program within the seminary itself.
Borha has applied for admission to Mundelein Seminary next fall.
“That was a hard decision,” said Borha, the son of a deacon and older brother to a 17-year-old student at Lewis University in Joliet. “The seminary is the only thing I’ve ever known. It’s like I’ve been in formation my entire life, even at home, and I thought about maybe taking some time away.”
But it has not been a hard decision to pursue the priesthood. Starting at six years old, when he asked Father Peter Cyscon, then pastor of St. Columbanus, how he could get to wear the vestments, he felt an interest in the priesthood. That was one reason Cyscon suggested Quigley when Borha’s parents asked for advice on where to send their 11-year-old to high school. The other reason was the small size and community atmosphere, Borha said.
By the end of his sophomore year, Borha said, he felt like a little brother to his classmates and was fully integrated into the school’s social life.
His commitment to ministry deepened at St. Joseph, where he spent two summers working at parishes—one at St. Agatha on the West Side, one at St. Agnes in suburban Chicago Heights—and a summer working in parishes and learning Spanish in Mexico City.
Now, as he looks toward Mundelein, he’s wondering whether it would be wise to be ordained at 23, possibly the youngest ever in the Archdiocese of Chicago. To do so would require special dispensation from the Vatican, which has set the usual minimum age at 25.
“I only have 19 years of life experience,” said Borha. “It’s not whether I have a call to the priesthood. In all the ministry situations I’ve been in, even when they’ve been difficult, it’s felt too natural for me to doubt my vocation.”
Mundelein Seminary
Tony Rokos, 24, is in his 10th year of seminary. If all goes according to plan, he will be ordained in the spring of 2007.
But he’s still not certain.
“I struggle every day with the question of whether I should be a priest,” said Rokos, one of five brothers who grew up on the North Side of Chicago. He is in his second year of the theology program at Mundelein Seminary, the largest theologate in the United States with 217 students from pre-theology through fourth year, studying for the Archdiocese of Chicago and 46 other dioceses.
Rokos followed his older brother to Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary with the thought that he might be called to the priesthood, he said.
The first thing he noticed?
“There weren’t any girls,” he said. “That was glaringly obvious the first day.”
But it was the emphasis on prayer and the willingness of the priest-teachers to share their experiences that made the biggest impression on him.
Rokos said one reason he chose Quigley and then St. Joseph College Seminary was the opportunity to set himself apart.
“It was a road less traveled,” he said. “It’s something that doesn’t appeal to most people. It was different from the lifestyles that most of my friends from grade school wanted to pursue. I would have a special relationship with God.”
The formation program at St. Joseph deepened that relationship and confirmed the call he felt, Rokos said. His summer pastoral experience at St. Agatha Parish on the West Side showed him what one of his biggest challenges would be as a priest: the public nature of a priest’s role.
“For me, it’s not an issue of obedience or celibacy,” Rokos said. “It’s an issue of having to be a public person, having to be available to people 24-7.”
Now one of the youngest seminarians in his class, Rokos feels a bit more jaded than some of the others. After 10 years of priestly formation, he takes the spiritual work he must do seriously, but he’s not as eager as some of the men whose first seminary experience is the theologate.
“If you’ve been through the system, you have different expectations than people who are coming into it for the first time,” Rokos said. “A lot of people who come into the system for the first time are very gung-ho. … I have a certain feeling of, ‘So we’re going through this again.’ But the higher level you go, the deeper into it you get.”

For information on priestly vocations, call Father Joseph Noonan, vocations director, (847) 970-4845, e-mail to [email protected] or visit www.chicagopriest.org.