ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post-Dispatch
By Michele Munz
POST-DISPATCH
09/26/2005
The 25 candidates studying to become priests at Aquinas Institute of Theology were described as "anxious" but not worried Monday as a Vatican team began evaluating how they are prepared intellectually, spiritually and sexually for priesthood.
"Whenever you are under the spotlight, it's difficult," the seminary's president, the Rev. Charles Bouchard, said at a press conference Monday. The students themselves were off limits to reporters, so it was Bouchard who was left to describe their mood.
The seminary on the campus of St. Louis University is in the spotlight because it's the first of 229 seminaries nationwide to be evaluated over the next nine months. The evaluations are in response to a sexual abuse scandal among clergy that began coming to light three years ago and revealed crimes and incidents that were covered up for decades.