Seminary where Pope Leo XIV studied was born out of Vatican II

By Father Mark Zacker

Jesus promised the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to continue to lead and guide the Church.  The early Church invoked the Holy Spirit to help them make important decisions.  The College of Cardinals, successors to the apostles, continues to work under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church with the recent election of Pope Leo XIV.

This papal election was especially meaningful for me because Pope Leo (formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost) and I attended the same seminary in Chicago, the Catholic Theological Union (CTU). He earned his Master of Divinity degree from CTU in 1982;  I earned mine in 1995.  We never met each other, but his religious order, the Augustinians, have a wonderful reputation for “love and learning.”

CTU is one of the largest schools of theology and ministry in the United States, forming students from more than 40 countries.  It was founded in 1968 by three men’s religious communities — Franciscans, Passionists, and Servites — and followed the Second Vatican Council’s call to create a new model of seminary formation: located in a large city, near a major university  (University of Chicago), and in a neighborhood where there could be close ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Today, the number of men’s communities who are the corporate owners of CTU has grown to 23. With over 4,500 alumni serving in more than 60 countries, CTU continues to form religious and lay leaders who serve the Church and world with theological depth and a passion for justice and peace.

I attended CTU as a seminarian with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and have fond memories of my four years at 54th and Cornell in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. I used to bicycle up and down the lakeshore bike path, year around, rain or shine!  It was great exercise with the gorgeous skyline of Chicago on one side and Lake Michigan on the other.  Thirty years later, some of my professors are still teaching there, including Sister Barbara Reid, OP, Father Roger Schroeder, SVD, and Father Richard Fragomeni. In fact, Father Fragomeni teaches homiletics; if you appreciate my preaching, give him the credit. If not, give me the blame — he was a wonderful teacher!

Pope Leo XIV embodies the CTU mission to form leaders who witness to service, global mission, and ecclesial leadership. I am so proud and happy to be his fellow alum!

Another one of the “signs of the times” following the Second Vatican Council was the increasing role of women in the Church. One thing that set CTU apart, and continues today, is that women are in class right alongside the seminarians. Pope Leo would have studied right alongside women who were earning the same degree that he was, and he would have had women professors.

In fact, when Pope Leo was a student at CTU, his spiritual director — a person who is specially trained to accompany others on their spiritual journeys and in deepening a relationship with God — was a woman: Sister Lyn Osiek. A religious sister of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Osiek was a professor of New Testament at CTU for 26 years and is a leading authority on the role of women in the early church.  For a seminarian to have a woman as spiritual director would be unheard of in other places. So, Pope Leo would have been formed in such a way that he’d be very comfortable with women in ministry alongside him.

I was honored to have Sister Lyn as one of my professors. Furthermore, Sister Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ, directed my master’s thesis. Sisters Barbara Bowe and Mary Frolich, RSCJ, Sister Dianne Bergant, CSA, along with Sister Reid, who is the current President of CTU, were all wonderful professors who taught me Sacred Scripture, Spirituality, and Liturgy. I am indebted to them for a great deal of my formation as a priest today.

If you have any doubt about the important role of women in the church, just visit your parish office (or the office of most parishes) — they are staffed primarily by women. Look at all the Catholic school teachers and parish catechists who pass on the faith to our children — most of them are women. The editor-in-chief of our diocesan newspaper, the Superintendent of our Catholic Schools, the Director of the Respect Life Apostolate, the Offices of the Pontifical Mission Societies, Stewardship and Development, Young Adult Ministry, Human Resources, and most of our Catholic Charities departments have women in leadership roles.  

One of the slogans we had for some time at CTU was “bold and faithful.” Pope Leo would have been grounded in faithfulness to the Catholic tradition but bold in bridging the Catholic tradition into the future. I pray that my priesthood and the continued growth of our church will be similarly “bold and faithful.”

(Father Mark Zacker is pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Castle Rock.)