Cleveland Diocese Sees Increase In Seminary Students

From The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Growing up in Cleveland, Chady Naoum, 19, wanted to do something to respond to the poverty and despair he saw around him. When Pope John Paul II died, he started to consider whether the something more he wanted to do in life meant becoming a priest.

Todd Kooser, 18, of St. Helen Church in Newbury, recalled seeing the priest celebrate the Eucharist at a diocesan music festival, and realizing, “I could do that. I could be the one who brings Christ into the world.”

Michael McClain, 20, of St. Ladislas Church in Westlake, said it felt like he was “saying yes to something” when he joined a church youth group his senior year in high school. When he visited the diocesan seminary, McClain said, “I knew this was the place for me. It was the place for someone like me who knows God and pursues God in their life.”

Naoum, Kooser and McClain are among nearly two dozen new seminarians bringing tidings of good cheer this Christmas season for the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, which is beginning to see a turnaround in seminary enrollment.

Twenty-two young men entered the undergraduate seminary program this academic year, eight more than the previous year and 16 more than the number of entering students in the 2002-2003 academic year.

Total enrollment in the graduate and undergraduate level seminaries increased by a third to 68 men in the past five years, bringing enrollment to a 14-year high.

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My Comments:
This appears to be excellent news for a neighboring Diocese (I'm located in the Diocese of Toledo), although I'm not sure, given some of the things I've read about the Cleveland Diocese.