In Portugal, a week of prayer for seminaries is observed from November 1st to 8th. This year’s chosen theme is: “A community that prays, a seminary that flourishes.”
The Missionaries of the Precious Blood have their Major Seminary in Guinea-Bissau, home to five young seminarians. In Africa, the CPPS Missionaries are present in both Guinea-Bissau and Tanzania. In these two countries, young men are responding to a vocational call, undergoing a process of discernment with the guidance of their formators—missionary priests.
The Iberian Province once experienced a time of vocational abundance, when minor seminaries were active in Fuente de Cantos (Spain), as well as in Vila Viçosa and Proença-a-Nova (Portugal), alongside major seminaries in Cáceres and Madrid (Spain) and Verride (Portugal). Today, the CPPS Missionaries keep their houses open and available to those who feel a vocational stirring—those who wish to discern their path through the lens of the spirituality of the Precious Blood, or who desire to make their lives a mission.
A pastoral note from the Portuguese Bishops Conference Commission for Vocations and Ministries poses this challenge:
“Drawing upon the image of the good sower, prayer is the seed that many cast with persistence—even without knowing the soil, trusting instead in the potential they recognize within it. Pray, pray; sow, sow!” Let us pray for all seminaries, and especially for those of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood.