Bishop John Dolan held a Mass in celebration of the opening of the seminary year on Thursday (Aug. 28) evening at the Virginia G. Piper Chapel at the Diocesan Pastoral Center in downtown Phoenix. Nazareth Seminary, the Diocese of Phoenix’s local seminary formation program, has a record 55 seminarians beginning study this month, and nearly 40 men were in attendance.
Nazareth Seminary incorporates an innovative home-style model of formation where seminarians live in community with one another and their formators in a home setting near an existing parish rather than an institutional setting. Eight priests that live in residence with the seminarians, providing formation and spiritual direction, concelebrated the kickoff Mass.
Nazareth House was established in 2019 as a one-to-two-year formation program for young seminarians before they were sent out of state to continue their studies. In October 2023, Bishop Dolan announced that Nazareth House would become one in a series of four formation houses to form the fully local Nazareth Seminary — the first of its kind in the 54-year history of the Diocese of Phoenix. All new seminarians studying with the Diocese of Phoenix will receive their full priestly formation locally.
The four formation homes that comprise Nazareth Seminary are St. Gregory House, Our Lady of Perpetual Help House, St. Mary’s House and St. Agnes House.
St. Gregory House, previously known as Nazareth House, opened in 2019 and is located near St. Gregory Parish in Phoenix. Here, seminarians currently receive introductory studies and human formation. The spiritual formation component takes place at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) House, established in August 2023, on the campus of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Scottsdale, Ariz. Discipleship and philosophical studies take place at St. Mary’s House, previously the Franciscan friary, in downtown Phoenix, which opened Oct. 1, 2024. The final house, St. Agnes House, is slotted to open in fall of 2026, located on the campus of St. Agnes Parish in Phoenix.
