"I would like to be once again the child I was when I was an altar boy or have the enthusiasm I felt before entering the seminary. But no, now there’s nothing of the kind any more. All of a sudden, an unaccountable seriousness has settled on me". These are the thoughts of a Rumanian seminarian, which he wrote to his parents a few days before his priestly ordination. Today, June 24th, this young man has become a priest. He has been ordained, along with another twenty deacons, in the cathedral of Iasi by bishop Petru Gherghel. "I want said the auxiliary bishop of Iasi, mgr. Aurel Perca you to be the true images of Christ, bring God’s hope to the whole world". Of the 21 new priests, 15 will go to the diocese of Iasi, 4 to the archdiocese of Bucharest, and two are religious men. Most of them have studied at the Roman Catholic Theological Institute of Iasi, which trains future priests for the Romanian-speaking dioceses of Iasi and Bucharest and for the Rumanian communities of the Latin rite in diaspora. The seminary of Iasi has been up and running since 1885, stopping only from 1948 to 1956, because of political conditions. After the fall of Ceausescu’s regime until today, the seminary of Iasi has given to the Church over 250 priests. Since 1995 it has been working in cooperation with the Papal Lateran University of Rome.
