St. Joseph Seminary at Loyola to close in June: archdiocese

St. Joseph College Seminary at Loyola University will close in June, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced Monday night.

The 20 men currently enrolled in the undergraduate seminary will be allowed to continue their studies, if they so choose, at St. John Vianney College Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

The archdiocese cited “changing demographics of candidates for priesthood” and “the expectation of a small entering class” as reasons for the closure.

St. Joseph was founded as Niles Seminary in 1968 and has been affiliated with Loyola since 1994, according to the archdiocese.

“There is a sadness in ending our longtime relationship with Loyola University,” Very Rev. Peter J. Sneig, the rector-president of St. Joseph, said in a statement. “However, we know that God is generous and provides, even in changing times. A building is only truly a seminary when the seminarians are present to study, pray and engage the community.”

While the closure of St. Joseph means there will no longer be Catholic seminaries within city limits, the Mundelein Seminary in the northern suburbs — the archdiocese’s graduate school of theology — has seen “strong enrollment over the years,” according to the archdiocese. Mundelein Seminary has about 200 students, who come to the school from dioceses across the country.

In 1990, the archdiocese closed Quigley South, a seminary for high school students. The campus at 7740 S. Western Ave. is now the site of St. Rita of Cascia High School.

Sixteen years later, the archdiocese closed the other Quigley campus downtown. That building now serves as the archdiocese’s headquarters.