The Francis Effect in Argentina: the Seminaries Are Drying Up
In better times, it was full of cassock-clad students professing the Catholic faith.
In a recent article in La Nación, the current rector, Rev. Julio Miranda, says: "I studied here between 1978 and 1985 and there were 220 seminarians, more than three times as many as there are now."
The few seminarians who remain are not even all from Buenos Aires, but come from dioceses such as San Martín, Patagonia and Zárate, which have closed their seminaries due to a lack of vocations.
Another seminary rector, Rev. Mario Larrosa of the Diocese of Morón, puts it this way: "If we didn't receive seminarians from Laferrere, Merlo-Moreno and San Miguel, we wouldn't even have a seminary". The diocese of Morón has two seminaries.
In 1985 the number of new seminarians in Argentina was 231. Then: 210 (1995), 256 (1997), 154 (2014), 107 (2020), 57 (2024).
The Seminary of Paraná has a capacity of 200 seminarians, but today it has 22: 15 from Paraná and 7 from Concordia.
What's surprising is that the death of seminaries in his homeland does not worry Francis as much as the growth of what he calls "very rigid" and "conservative" religious congregations, which are not lacking in vocations.
In a course held in 2020 for rectors and formators of the dying Latin American seminaries, he advised them to "dream together" (sic). Then he sharply denounced that "religious congregations have sprung up which are a disaster" and "which had to be gradually closed down", because they are "congregations of rigid [= Catholic] people who, behind this rigidity hid a real rottenness".
"Could it be that one is looking for the speck in someone else's eye, while being unable to see the beam in one's own?" - asks Argentine commentator Bernardino Montejano.
The article also reports that the closure of the thriving diocesan seminary of the Diocese of San Rafael was "ordered" (sic) by Bergoglio, despite the fact that it had 39 seminarians, all belonging to the relatively small diocese (250,000).
After the closure of the seminary, an important group decided to leave priestly formation. It seems that Francis didn't like the "strong interference" of the Congregation of the Incarnate Word (IVE) in the community of the seminary.
Montejano calls the allegation of IVE interference in the seminary a lie.
"May God bless the seminarians of San Rafael who have become victims of a tyrannical pope, delivered by a wretched traitor", whom Montejano calls "the wretched [retired Bishop Eduardo] Taussig [of San Rafael], whose lackeyism was of no use to him. The traitor is not necessary, since the betrayal has been carried out".
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