Alumni of Chicago high school seminary come for one last goodbye

Published: 2007-03-13

CHICAGO (CNS) -- March 11 was a bittersweet day for Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary and its community of faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends, said Father Peter Sneig, the school's president and rector. It was the day of "The Great Goodbye," hosted by Quigley to give everyone an opportunity to visit the Chicago archdiocesan high school seminary one last time. It will close in June after 102 years of educating young men considering the priesthood. In his homily at an evening Mass in St. James Chapel, Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George spoke of the importance of relationships -- people's relationships with God, but also with the people who teach them about God. Such relationships endure to eternity, when everything else falls away. "We look at the closing of this building as a school and its transition to something new, and it's sad," said the cardinal who, though a Chicago native, attended St. Henry Preparatory Seminary in Belleville. "But the relationships forged here will last forever." The day included a morning Mass celebrated by Cardinal Edward M. Egan of New York, who graduated from Quigley in 1951 and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1957. There also was an afternoon concert. Throughout the day, the building was open to alumni and friends, who came in and searched out their class pictures on the corridor walls and met up with classmates.

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