Sacred Heart Celebrates Largest Graduating Class

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For Immediate Release May 5, 2008

Contact:
Mrs. Michelle Szczepanski, Assistant Dean of Studies
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
2701 Chicago Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan 48206
313-883-8717 / szczepanski.michelle@shms.edu 
http://www.shmsonline.org

Detroit, Michigan, May 5, 2008—Sacred Heart Major Seminary celebrated its eighty-fourth baccalaureate Mass and graduation exercises on Saturday, April 26, 2008, in the main chapel of its campus at 2701 Chicago Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan.

Sacred Heart is the college and graduate school seminary of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit that educates and forms candidates for the priesthood, diaconate and lay ministry.

This was the largest graduating class of students since the re-founding of the Sacred Heart as a major seminary in 1987: 89 graduates earned 97 degrees in ten certificate, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate academic programs. Of the 89 graduates, 27 were seminarians preparing for the priesthood for the Detroit. archdiocese and dioceses nationally and internationally, with the remainder lay ministry students, diaconate candidates and ordained priests earning additional upper-level degrees in theology.

Particularly noteworthy at the 2008 ceremonies was the conferring of degrees upon the first four graduates of the Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL) program. Established in 2004, the STL is the first such program in the United States with a concentration in the New Evangelization. The Vatican-authorized postgraduate degree, which permits degree holders the opportunity to teach theology in a Catholic seminary or Pontifical university, is conferred by the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (the Angelicum) in Rome through the faculty of Sacred Heart.

His Excellency John M. Quinn, auxiliary bishop for the Detroit archdiocese, celebrated the baccalaureate Mass, while Sacred Heart's rector and president, Very Reverend Monsignor Jeffrey M. Monforton, delivered the homily and presented the degrees and certificates. Rev. Todd Lajiness, dean of studies, presented the candidates.