ILLINOIS
Chicago Sun-Times
September 16, 2005
BY CATHLEEN FALSANI Religion Reporter
Beginning early next month, teams of specially appointed Vatican investigators will visit Chicago area Catholic seminaries to determine whether priests are being trained properly and to what degree homosexuality is present on campus.
The Vatican has ordered "apostolic visitations," as the inspections are formally known, of all 229 seminaries and houses of formation for priests in the United States. The visitations have been anticipated for several years and are, in part, a response to the clergy sex abuse scandal that has rocked the American church since 2002.
While some church leaders insist the visitations are meant to examine how well priests are being trained spiritually and intellectually, others say the inspections are a thinly veiled attempt to root out homosexuals in the clergy.
"They are basically checking to see if we are in compliance with what the church has asked us to do," said the Rev. Thomas Baima, provost of Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, the largest seminary in the United States. Nine "apostolic visitors" are to begin their examination of Mundelein's 205 seminarians and 40 faculty members the first week of October. The visitors will also interview about 100 men who have graduated from Mundelein in the past three years, Baima said. "The issue is, if we're training men for chaste celibacy, we want to make sure there's no sexual activity going on at all."