On April 19th, the third anniversary of his election as pope, Pope Benedict XVI will meet with seminarians and young people, including about 50 young people with disabilities, at Saint Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, in Yonkers, New York.
Saint Joseph’s is the fifth seminary established for the archdiocese, following seminaries in Nyack, Lafargeville, Fordham, and Troy.
Archbishop Michael J. Corrigan laid the cornerstone for Saint Joseph’s Seminary in 1891. He had decided to relocate the seminary closer to New York City. The seminary admitted its first group of 98 students in 1896.
For the first ten years the seminary was under the direction of priests of the Society of Saint Sulpice (the Sulpicians). Historian Fr. John Tracy Ellis has asserted that Dunwoodie, for the first twelve years of its existence, ranked second only to the Catholic University of America in its contribution to American Catholic intellectual life. The archdiocese assumed control of the seminary in 1906. Priests of the archdiocese make up the majority of the seminary’s faculty and administration.
Pope Benedict will be the second Pope to visit Dunwoodie. Pope John Paul II met with seminarians there on October 5, 1995.
Source: The Archdiocese of New York.
