Built Differently

 Today’s priests are facing a new set of challenges:

• A hostile culture
• Loneliness and isolation
• Declining attendance at Sunday Mass
• Budget constraints
• Decaying buildings
• Juggling multiple parish assignments

The list is exhaustive and never ending. How do we deal with all that?!

We hold fast to a better way of living out the priesthood that began in 1985.

40 years ago, four seminarians began meeting with Fr. Bob Bedard in Ottawa because of inadequate formation and inappropriate behaviour in their seminaries. “Things at the seminary were anything but good.” (Fr. Bob Bedard, Give God Permission, p. 221)

They began meeting to support and encourage each other. It was the beginning of a brotherhood, the Companions of the Cross, that now includes 41 priests, 2 bishops, and 17 seminarians.

40 years since those meetings began, we are confident that our seminarians are receiving unparalleled formation that includes academic education grounded in solid Catholic theology as well as spiritual, pastoral, and human formation. It is a uniquely different priestly formation program built on Fr. Bob’s vision for renewing the priesthood and the Church.

How do you deal with that new set of challenges? You build a different kind of priest. We are built differently.