Trainee priests to be cut off from lay students

VATICAN chiefs have ordered trainee priests at Ireland’s national seminary at Maynooth to be physically separated from the university’s 8,000 lay students.

Although students have prepared for the priesthood at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth since 1795, the seminary shares a sprawling campus with the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) and dozens of administrativeoffices, including the headquarters of the Irish bishops’ conference.

But under a reform of training structures for priests in Ireland, instigated by the Apostolic Visitation, the college’s 70 seminarians will be now completely cut off from the wider university community.