REDEMPTORIS MATER MISSIONARY SEMINARY (RMMS) OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF TORONTO

The diocesan and missionary ‘Redemptoris Mater’ Seminaries correspond to the new reality hoped for by the Second Vatican Council, when it affirmed:

The spiritual gift which priests receive at their ordination prepared them not for a sort of limited and narrow mission but for the widest possible and universal mission of salvation “even to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), for every priestly ministry shares in the universality of the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles. The priesthood of Christ, in which all priests really share, is necessarily intended for all peoples and all times, and it knows no limits of blood, nationality or time, since it is already mysteriously prefigured in the person of Melchisedech. Let priests remember, therefore, that the care of all churches must be their intimate concern. Hence, priests of such dioceses as are rich in vocations should show themselves willing and ready, with the permission of their own ordinaries (bishops), to volunteer for work in other regions, missions or end eavors which are poor in numbers of clergy […] To accomplish this purpose there should be set up international seminaries […] by means of which, according to their particular statutes and always saving the right of bishops, priests may be trained and incardinated for the good of the whole Church (Presbyterorum Ordinis, § 10).

Under the inspiration of St. John Paul II, Pope, the first ‘Redemptoris Mater’ Seminary was erected in Rome, in 1987. In 1991, the Interdicasterial Commission created by him acknowledged how such a conciliar idea found an answer and actualization in this kind of Seminaries, which, following the modalities of the Neocatechumenal Way, form candidates to the priesthood according to a new form of ministry, that of the “diocesan missionary” for the New Evangelization (cf. L’Osservatore Romano, 15.03.1991).

Aloysius Matthew Cardinal Ambrožič signed the decree of the erection for the ‘Redemptoris Mater’ Missionary Seminary of the Archdiocese of Toronto on June 21, 1999.