FSSP to offer Vocational Training program for Women

July 2007
VOCATIONAL Training Program for young LADIES:

For several years the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter has received requests from young ladies asking whether we could help them answer a possible calling to an apostolic (non contemplative) consecrated life. These young ladies wish to devote themselves to God in the active service of the neighbour in a parochial setting, or possibly in our missions. We propose to them a Vocational Training Program within the following framework :

1) Duration: from October 2007 until June 2008 included, in Perpignan (Southern France) under the responsibility of Fr. William Vojtek, FSSP. Applications to be sent (see address below) until September 14, 2007.

2) Program: Initiation with the spiritual life and the community life; secondarily: pedagogics, liturgical chant and parochial services (for example teaching children, visiting the persons in need, contributing to sacristy tasks).

3) Trainers: The trainees will be under the pastoral responsibility of priests from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (an international community of pontifical right, of Extraordinary Roman rite). Director of the training course: Fr. William Vojtek, FSSP: with a rich experience of many years in the formation of applicants to consecrated apostolic life, also in regular contacts with numerous religious female communities. Fr. Jean-Eric Diehr, FSSP, a medical doctor, will bring additional training on some psychological aspects of the pastoral service. Visiting speakers, in particular some apostolic religious nuns, are envisaged.

4) Costs: The expenses of lodging, teaching and subsistence will be covered by the FSSP, but transport charges, health insurance and personal expenditure will have to be covered by the trainees or their families.

5) Engagements: no formal promises or vows of any kind and no religious habit during these 9 months.

6) Criteria: French-speaking young ladies (from any country), at least 18 years of age, baptized Catholics, in good physical and psychological health.

7) Next step: If it pleases God, the training course will lead to a formation with the consecrated life (in a noviciate linked with the FSSP), but it does not guarantee it. It is expected that such further formation might be provided in North America. However, the training course is conceived in itself as an enriching experience, offering to young ladies a 9-month initiation to the spiritual and community life, including teaching and charity work, during one school year. The training course will have achieved an estimable goal while bringing the benefit of a spiritual maturation and a deepening of the Christian virtues in the service of neighbours, through the Roman traditions of the Church.

Signed: General House FSSP

Postal address: "Stage vocationnel 2007-2008, Maison Saint Pierre Canisius, Chemin du Schoenberg 8, CH-1700, Fribourg, SWITZERLAND"
E-mail address: vocations@fssp.org