Surge in British novices joining the Dominicans

A larger intake of men is due to enter the Order of Preachers in September but funds are desperately needed for their training

Eight men are due to enter the Dominican novitiate in Cambridge this September. But the Order of Preachers urgently requires £60,000 to cover the cost of this surge in vocations.

“The novitiate year alone costs around £12,000 per friar,” say the Dominican Friars in Britain, who are transforming attic space into a bedroom at Blackfriars, Cambridge to provide enough space for the new novices.

In a two-and-half minute video launching the St Dominic’s Formation Fund, the Order says it needs approximately £150,000 per novice to cover the overall costs of formation. “We strongly believe the Dominican vocation demands an exceptional formation,” the English Dominicans explain in the video.

Their eight-year formation programme includes five years of study at the Blackfriars Studium in Oxford. After ordination, new Dominicans study a further two years in Rome or elsewhere to obtain a licence to teach theology. Post novitiate, each additional year of formation costs around £19,000 per novice. Of this, £8,600 is required to cover academic fees, and £6,000 food, while a further £2,000 is needed for travel expenses and £2,300 for personal expenditure.

“We believe that an excellent intellectual formation rooted in the Church’s teaching and tradition is vital to equip friars for their future mission, to be ready at all times to preach the Gospel confidently and patiently in a world that is so often hostile to the Christian message,” say the Dominicans in the video, adding, “Such a thorough formation does not come cheap.”

In a statement, the Dominicans said the men came from “many different backgrounds” and were “a sign of hope for the universal Church, especially for its intellectual life.”They continued: “We believe that attentive pastoral care for the people to whom we minister demands a careful and thorough formation of our friars’ minds as well as their hearts.” They described Dominican formation as “rigorous, but also personal,” because it aims to “nurture the individual talents of each friar, allowing him to find the apostolates to which he is being called.”

Asked why the Order of Preachers was attracting vocations, Fr Toby Lees OP said: “Increasing numbers of young men are finding something particularly attractive and effective about the Dominican life as a way of making known the love of Christ in our present era.”

Fr Lees, the Vocations’ Promoter for the Order, added: “They see intellectual clarity and charity as essential for this task,and something they have received in the Order’s preaching which they now wish to hand on to others in all the different ways that the Dominicans are engaging with the modern world.”

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