CatholicAnchor.org
Fifth-year seminarian for the Anchorage Archdiocese, Robert Whitney, was ordained a transitional deacon on June 3 at Holy Family Cathedral. Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz prayed over him, laid his hands upon his head and administered the sacrament of holy orders. That marked the one-year count down to Whitney’s ordination next summer when he is scheduled to become Alaska’s newest Catholic priest.
But the homegrown Anchorage man has some work to do before crossing the finish line.
One day after his June 3 ordination to the transitional diaconate, Whitney embarked on an 11-week whirlwind service tour to parishes across Southcentral Alaska. As part of his final year of preparation, he is scheduled to preach, volunteer and serve as needed at eight separate parishes. Additionally he is working with youth at the Alaska Catholic Youth Conference and will later travel with young Alaskan pilgrims to World Youth Day in Poland.
The goal is to give locals a chance to meet their priest-in-training, and give Whitney a taste of the Catholic Church across the 138,000-square-mile archdiocese.
According to instructions by Father Tom Lilly, who is charged with the care and direction of seminarians for the Anchorage Archdiocese, parishes will provide Whitney with room and board while he serves as a deacon, preaches one or more weekend homilies, is mentored by other resident deacons, participates in summer faith formation programs and youth group activities, as well as any number of other parish gatherings or meetings. He’s even available for “good old fashioned manual labor,” according to Father Lilly.
At the end of each parish stint he will receive a short exit briefing from the resident pastor regarding his service to the community. The pastor will then write up a short narrative and pass it along to Father Lilly, who will take all the submissions and write a more encompassing narrative of the entire summer to be shared with Whitney’s superiors at St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota.
Once he returns to seminary this fall he will fine-tune the skills of the priesthood in order to effectively preach homilies, celebrate Mass and administer the other sacraments.
'Alaskan seminarian on the road for summer of service' have 2 comments
June 2016 @ 2:17 pm Joel Davidson
All seminarians training to serve as priests for the Archdiocese of Anchorage go through a “summer of service” in order to better learn more about the many far-flung parishes in our 138,000 square mile archdiocese. It’s also a chance for many of these rural Alaskan Catholics to meet their future priests.
June 2016 @ 8:35 pm T. Peterson
This is the first time I have ever heard of Deacons or any other prior seminarians having to do Summer stints, Live in residence of churches, or due manual labor or have exit reviews sent to their seminary. Is this something new that is required of priests in Alaska or just Anchorage Diocese?