In honor of the feast day of St. Charles Borromeo, the patron saint of seminarians, more than 350 people, including seminarians, gathered Nov. 2 to 4 at the University of St. Thomas and joined in a 40-hour weekend of prayer.
The eighth annual Borromeo Weekend began with a Mass in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on the school’s north campus commemorating the faithful departed, followed by a candlelight procession to St. Mary’s Chapel on the south campus.
The weekend included Liturgy of the Hours and Cor Jesu, a monthly event hosted in St. Mary’s Chapel which included eucharistic adoration and the sacrament of reconciliation.
The event began in 2005 as a way to increase fraternity between seminarians attending St. John Vianney College Seminary and the graduate-level St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity and has grown into a community-wide event and is open to the public.
Joncas to be artist-in-residence at St. Thomas
Theologian, author and composer Father Jan Michael Joncas has been named an artist-in-residence at the University of St. Thomas and fellow of St. Thomas’ Center for Catholic Studies.
A 1975 graduate of UST and faculty member since 1991, Father Joncas will no longer teach courses but will now be free to do research and write, compose and lecture. He will maintain an office in Sitzmann Hall.
Father Joncas recently had a volume of hymn texts accepted for publication by Oregon Catholic Press. He is currently recording 12 new works of liturgical music that he composed and arranged, and writing three books.
Knights establish Father Vakoc assembly
The Knights of Columbus established the Father Timothy H. Vakoc Assembly 3373, the organization’s first assembly in Europe, during a recent ceremony at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
Also during the ceremony, known as “exemplification,” 120 men, active duty military personnel, Department of Defense workers and retirees based in Germany, Italy and England entered into the Fourth Degree, the highest degree of the order, according to an Oct. 16 press release.
Father Vakoc, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and Minnesota Army chaplain, was seriously injured in Iraq in 2004 and died June 20, 2009.
He became a military chaplain in 1996 and was stationed in Germany, Bosnia and Korea before he was called up for active duty in Iraq in 2003.
