Introduced by Bishop Edgar M. da Cunha’s December 2024 Pastoral Letter, this initiative is centered on strengthening our Priests through six strategic priorities to be implemented over three years. The fruits of this endeavor, as the Bishop explains in his Letter, will be “a Priesthood set up for success for years to come and a new positive ministerial environment where Christ can more readily reach every soul in our Diocese through the mediation of His priests.”
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2025 Ordinations to be held at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Fall River
None are scheduled.
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Our seminarians are under the guidance of Vocations Director Fr. Jack Schrader and Associate Director Fr. John Garabedian.
See the diocesan webpage for more info https://www.fallriverdiocese.org/vocations-office/
June 2024:
Deacon Lucas DaCosta: III Theology at St. John’s Seminary, Brighton MA. (Taking a year of absence from formation.) He is from St. Francis Xavier Parish, Acushnet.
John Martin: Will be at Our Lady of Providence Seminary, RI which incorporates the benchmarks of the Propaedeutic Stage* into freshman year of college. He is from St. Anthony Parish in New Bedford.
Evan Mello: Will be at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, MD for the Propaedeutic Stage.* He is from Transfiguration of the Lord Parish, North Attleboro.
Jose Antonio Costa Torrejao: IV Theology at St. John XXIII National Seminary, Weston MA. (Bishop da Cunha has accepted him as a new seminarian for the Diocese of Fall River; Aug. 2023. This seminary is for those 30 years of age and older responding to a call to priestly ministry.) Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in New Bedford has become his new home parish.
Kaique Duarte Santos: IV Theology Immaculate Conception Seminary, South Orange, NJ. He arrived from Brazil in December 2023, transferring from the seminary of the Canção Nova Community. He is assigned for ministry at Holy Family Parish in East Taunton.
*The “propaedeutic stage” (preliminary instruction) is the very first stage, which “seeks to provide seminarians with the basic groundwork they need to engage in priestly formation.” (Program of Priestly Formation, 6th Edition, #119), It is designed to be a period of preparation that enables the men to enter properly into the life of the seminary with a solid foundation of human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral formation. During this stage, participants begin to develop a life of prayer, study, fraternity, and appropriate docility to formation, which takes place within the context of a smaller community, free from the academic stress of a typical undergraduate or graduate school curriculum.