Monsignor Aloysius Callaghan to head seminary
Monsignor Aloysius Callaghan, currently vicar general for the archdiocese that serves U.S. military personnel throughout the world, will become rector and vice president of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity of the University of St. Thomas, Archbishop Harry Flynn announced today.
Callaghan, 58, succeeds Bishop Frederick Campbell, who last October was named bishop of the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio, by the late Pope John Paul II. Campbell became rector of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in June 2002.
Monsignor
Aloysius Callaghan
Father John Ubel has been serving as interim rector of the seminary since the beginning of the year.
In addition to his responsibilities as seminary rector, Callaghan will be a vice president of St. Thomas. A 1987 affiliation brought together the seminary’s master’s degree programs in theology and divinity and St. Thomas’ master's programs in pastoral studies.
The school, which also offers a doctorate in ministry, this year enrolled 65 seminarians and 57 lay students. Seventeen graduating seminarians are being ordained to the priesthood this spring.
In addition to work at the Vatican, Callaghan has served as a parish priest and pastor, high school teacher, vocations director, diocesan official and seminary spiritual director.
He was named chancellor and moderator of the curia of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, U.S.A., in 1995 and became its vicar general the following year.
Headquartered a few miles from the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the Archdiocese for the Military Services ministers to active-duty personnel and their families. As vicar general he is chief financial officer of the archdiocese and oversees its communications and administrative business on a day-to-day basis.
He also has been serving as an adjunct spiritual director for Mount St. Mary Seminary in Emmitsburg, M.D., the nation’s second-largest seminary.
“I have known Monsignor Callaghan for many years,” Flynn said. “When he was vocation director for the Diocese of Allentown, Pa., I was rector at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary.
“I have every hope that Monsignor Callaghan will make a fine rector as is evidenced from his performances in various ministries in the past,” the archbishop said.
A native of a small town in Schuylkill County in Pennsylvannia, Callaghan began studies for the priesthood at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He completed his training at the Lateran University in Rome and was ordained there in 1971 in St. Peter’s Basilica.
After two years of parish, high school and diocesan work in Pennsylvania, he returned to Rome for graduate studies at the Lateran University, where in 1977 he completed a doctorate in canon law. He returned to the Diocese of Allentown, where he served as secretary to the bishop and held positions with the diocesan Tribunal, Liturgical Commission and vocations office.
In 1984 he was named judicial vicar of the Allentown diocese and a church pastor. Two years later he traveled to Rome to become an official with the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes at the Vatican, and in 1991 he was named an official with the Congregation for Bishops. He served at the Vatican until joining the Archdiocese for the Military Services in 1995.
