The Rev. Stephen L. Maco got off the bus and entered the place of his spiritual, priestly formation — St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.
“I wanted to take one last look,” said Maco, a longtime Allentown Diocese priest who studied at St. Charles. “Lots of fond memories. It was a wonderful place.”
The seminary, part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, in the suburb of Wynnewood in Montgomery County, will be relocating in the summer to a $54.5 million college at nearby Gwynedd Mercy University, also in lower Montgomery County. St. Charles was founded in 1832; it has been at the current site since six years after the Civil War ended — 1871.
Though the seminary stopped public viewings since the decision to move, the Lehigh Valley Serra Club requested a tour to give local residents — many of whom have studied at St. Charles over the years — a last glimpse of the historical site.
“We invited people across the diocese,” said Jack Norman, president of the Serrans, an organization that fosters religious vocations. He said the bus riders represented at least 10 parishes, while about 15 men from the five-county Allentown Diocese are seminarians. St. Charles also has candidates from more than a dozen dioceses in the U.S. and other countries.
Over nearly two centuries, St. Charles has hosted notables, including two saints: Pope St. John Paul II and St. Teresa of Calcutta. Pope Francis resided at the seminary during his two-day stay in Philadelphia for the September 2015 World Youth Day, his first apostolic visit to the United States. Four other popes stayed there too.
The seminary houses many archives of the archdiocese, and a walk along its hallways reveals a collection of religious art and portraits of archdiocesan leaders. An “Eakins Room,” so-named for the many portraits by Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins, features some of his paintings lining its walls.
But the seminary’s core mission is to prepare men for service in the priesthood. The several Lehigh Valley seminarians who escorted the Serrans and other guests answered questions about life in the seminary and later shared a meal with the pilgrims.
The visitors also participated in vespers, an evening prayer service in St. Martin of Tours Chapel. The chapel more closely resembles a cathedral, with large, stained glass windows and walnut pews, most of which are arranged in a fashion known as “antiphonal,” or directly across from one another.
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Seminarian Tyle Davis talks with members of the Serra Club of Lehigh Valley as they take a tour Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023, of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, west of Philadelphia. The seminary will relocate to Gwynedd Mercy University in Lower Gwynedd Township, Montgomery County, next year. Seminarians Tyler Davis and Bobby Rienzo from the Allentown Diocese led the tour. (Amy Shortell/The Morning Call)
One priest’s reflections
Maco studied at St. Charles during the 1960s but detoured from religious studies, leaving the seminary to teach and study law.
“I just felt called to come back,” said Maco, 78, of his return to St. Charles. He was ordained in 1976 and served the Allentown Diocese ever since.
He recalled getting up at 5 a.m. for mandatory prayers, and having little time to venture off the grounds and explore the Philadelphia region.
“They [the seminarians] called it the West Point of seminaries because it was so tough,” he said. “Your day started, and you were on a roll until the day came to an end.”
Like today’s trainees, Maco spent one day a week in the field, volunteering at the archdiocese’s St. Lucy School for Children with Visual Impairments. Friday nights, he said, were spent walking the perimeter of the school, whose front entrance on East Wynnewood Road is across from tony houses.
“The only thing we got out to was to register for the [military] draft, which was still in effect at that time, or to go to the dentist,” Maco said. “Other than that, we were here from September [the first day when seminarians unpacked was known as ‘Trunk Day’], we got home Thanksgiving morning, and we had to be back here by 7 o’clock Thanksgiving night.”
Today’s seminarians
The seemingly spartan life Maco described contrasts somewhat with that of today’s seminarians, including Tyle D. Davis and Robert F. Rienzo.
For example, Davis, a Southern Lehigh High School and DeSales University grad, said the morning prayer time is not mandatory; he estimated about 40% of the seminarians attend. Saturdays are “free days” during which seminarians can leave the grounds.
Amid studies and worship, the seminarians can participate in athletics, including an inter-seminary soccer tournament and a “Cassock Classic” Frisbee tournament that draws hundreds of young people from outside the seminary, Davis and Rienzo said.
“The ‘solemnness’ of chapel is very important, sitting communally” and building fraternity, said Rienzo, a graduate of Emmaus High School and Notre Dame University. “But all the human stuff is good too.”
Davis and Rienzo, who will be ordained after finishing studies at the new seminary, on Thursdays leave St. Charles and drive to the Lehigh Valley, gaining experience with pastors or others at various parishes locally. Davis is serving at St. Anne Church in Bethlehem, while Rienzo is in south Bethlehem at Holy Infancy parish.
Owen R. Fitzgerald, a 2021 graduate of Notre Dame High School in Bethlehem Township, noted the historic seminary, with everything from living quarters to indoor recreation being connected on the inside, was built for priestly formation. The long hallways of St. Charles, like an indoor cloister with repeating arched doorways, were designed to be a place for quiet contemplation.
“That’s what I like about being here,” Fitzgerald said, acknowledging he is still deciding about the priesthood. “The seminary is a place of discernment.”
His mother, Colleen Fitzgerald of Lower Saucon Township, said her son is discerning “one day at a time.” She said the contemplative environment at St. Charles affords him that opportunity.
Vocational discernment is the process by which men and women in the Roman Catholic Church recognize their role in the church and world. That might include choosing the life of a layperson or becoming ordained as a clergy or consecrated religious life.
“It’s such a beautiful piece of history and architecture; the artwork is phenomenal,” Colleen Fitzgerald said. “It’s so beautiful to walk the halls. So it is sad that it’s closing, but I think it’s great that they’re going to Gwynned Mercy, and I’m excited about the new location.”
Allison and Michael Civitella of Easton, whose son Dominic is among the local seminarians, said they have visited several times, each time in awe.
“There is an overwhelming peace, at least for me,” Michael Civitella said. “I can’t explain it, but you feel like you’re home when you’re here. It’s also overwhelming to think in our secular world, there are men like this that want to give their lives to God.”
Said Allison Civitella: “It’s such a sacred, holy place. You feel like you’re in a holy place.”
Reason for relocating
Archdiocesan leaders discussed moving and occupying a smaller footprint since at least 2013, according to the Rev. Keith Chylinski, who is in his second year as St. Charles rector. In May 2019, church leaders sold the 73-acre campus to Main Line Health, a health care system serving portions of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley, but have continued to occupy the site until the lease expires in August.
While the church has struggled in recent years amid sex-abuse scandals, reducing the number of enrolled seminarians, Chylinski said the decision was based more on operational factors and costs.
“The figure was in the tens of millions of dollars just for deferred maintenance,” said Chylinski.
Many of St. Charles’ buildings are not in use, Chylinski said. The campus used to have 500-600 seminarians in the mid-1960s, but more recently has seen about 150 candidates per year, Chylinski said.
Chylinski, who spent six years in formation and taught at St. Charles before becoming rector, had mixed feelings about the move. He’s excited, but it is hard letting go of the history.
“It’s where God spoke to you, or he was forming you to the priesthood,” the rector said. “So those places where you were praying, learning or struggling, or you’re feeling all this joy in that preparation … the place itself has a lot of meaning.”
Seminarians repeated similar sentiments about what the current seminary means to them, and what they are looking forward to at the new St. Charles.
Dominic C. Civitella, 27, who is in his fourth year, said he first experienced annoyance and anger at relocating. He said like one of the Roman Catholic prayers in a liturgy known as Stations of the Cross, in which Jesus Christ is stripped of his clothes before being crucified, the church is shedding or having to downsize as a reality of its state in today’s world.
But anger turned to anticipation for Civitella, a Notre Dame High School graduate.
“This is the will of God, and so I’m excited just to do that,” he said. “I’m OK with that now.”
At the dinner in the refectory, Maco sat at a table with fellow classmates Daniel Molesky of Allentown and Nick Colasanti of Pottstown, neither of whom became priests.
“Although I didn’t stay, it was an education that literally changed my life,” said Colasanti, who wound up marrying and working as a teacher, financial adviser and hypnotist.
Maco said the periods cut off from family and the secular world helped him bond with Molesky and Colasanti, along with others who became priests.
“The guys who will be coming in will never experience what was an incredible experience, and the fraternity that evolved from it,” said Maco, who was a teacher, administrator and coach at various diocesan schools. He said the men, including those like Molesky and Colasanti, who went on to other vocations, still gather and reminisce.
“I can’t imagine that it would be like any other institution, in a sense,” he said, “because you’ve become so interdependent with one another, and those bonds last. Where else does that happen?”
Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone can be reached at [email protected].
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