Assumption Seminary

The Diocese of San Antonio was established in 1874 under the guidance of its first Bishop, the Most Reverend Anthony Dominic Pellicer. A system for training seminarians was initiated. Two years later, however, these early seminarians in San Antonio were transferred to Seguin, where a group of Jesuits exiled from Mexico had founded Guadalupe College. In 1880, students were moved to St. Joseph’s College in Victoria and continued to study there until 1902. With no seminary in the diocese, students were sent to the newly opened San Antonio Philosophical and Theological Seminary, now Oblate School of Theology. Faced with a severe shortage of priests, an average of only one per every 1,000 square miles in the diocese, and a burgeoning population of Catholics intensified by the Revolution in Mexico, Bishop John W. Shaw opened a seminary in his residence in 1915. Five years later, the school was given the name of St. John’s Seminary and was relocated to a site adjacent to Immaculate Conception Mission. In 1928, two years after San Antonio was elevated to an Archdiocese, a theology department was added. Priests from the Archdiocese formed the core of the faculty of the flourishing seminary.

Assumption Seminary continues to respond to the “signs of the times” in the American Church as it prepares men for creative ministry as Catholic Priests. By concentrating upon the development of men for Hispanic ministry and for church leadership through collaboration in ministry, Assumption Seminary is meeting the challenge of calling forth effective leaders for the church as it moves into the next millennium.

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