World News
Woodstock Theological Center to close in June after 40 years
Published: February 15, 2013
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Jesuit-run Woodstock Theological Center, on the campus of Georgetown University in Washington -- another Jesuit-run institution -- will close at the end of June, a victim of the shrinking number of Jesuits available to staff it. Hopes are that Georgetown will assume the center's work and assets. "The trustees made a decision to look at Georgetown first. If that doesn't work, they'll look at other places," said Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Woodstock. Father Reese said the decision to close was the culmination of "a process that's been going on for the past few months. We've been involved in a strategic plan for the past few months, planning for the next five years, and the trustees decided that because of the manpower needs of the Jesuits, it just wasn't viable to keep the center going as a Jesuit institution with all of the other colleges and universities and institutions and theological seminaries that we run," he said. "The numbers just don't add up." About the closure, Father Reese told Catholic News Service in a Feb. 15 telephone interview, "I wasn't all that surprised, but simply sad." Woodstock had been supported by the order's three East Coast provinces: Maryland, New York and New England. "The enormous transformations experienced by the Society of Jesus in the last 40 years have influenced the allocation of human and material resources," said a Feb. 15 announcement of Woodstock's impending closure as an independent ministry of the provinces.
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