Scottish seminary reopens in Spain

The Church in Scotland has announced its college in Spain will reopen as a seminary.

The Royal Scots College, Salamanca, will start accepting students for a preparatory “propaedeutic” six months before going to Rome.

It will be similar to the preparatory year for those discerning a vocation run by the Royal English College in Valladolid, Spain. 

The closure of the last seminary in Scotland, Scotus College, Glasgow took place in 2009 and since then all students for the priesthood have been sent to the Scots College, Rome. Following the visit of Benedict XVI in 2010, the Scottish Church said it hoped to reopen a seminary in Scotland in “the medium term”.

Fr Tom Kilbride, a parish priest and director of religious education for the Archdiocese of Glasgow has been named as the new rector of the college in Salamanca.

The Archbishop of Glasgow, Philip Tartaglia, said he was “pleased” that the ­college would be once again used for the forming of new priests, its “historic purpose for the last four centuries”.

The college was established in 1627 as a seminary for the Church in Scotland when it was illegal to practise the Catholic faith in the country. As it is a royal foundation, the King of Spain appoints the rector – with the approval of the Holy See – and the candidate put forward by the Scottish bishops.