By Matthew Gambino • Posted March 27, 2025

Following recent directives from the Vatican concerning priestly formation, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary announced a new schedule for ordinations to priesthood and transitional diaconate in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The schedule was communicated March 21 in letter by Bishop Keith Chylinski, rector of the seminary, to clergy in the Archdiocese.

The 2026 class of transitional deacons – who typically after a year’s time are ordained to the priesthood – will remain on track for their diaconate ordination on May 10 of this year.

They will be ordained priests on May 16, 2026.

The following year’s class will be ordained transitional deacons on Dec. 5, 2026 and priests on June 12, 2027.

The new schedule alters the long-standing practice of transitional deacon ordination in mid-May, followed a week later by priestly ordination.

The changes were the result of consultation with Archbishop Nelson Pérez, the auxiliary bishops of Philadelphia and the offices for Divine Worship and Clergy.

They stem from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Program of Priestly Formation in the United States, which according to the USCCB “serves as a guide for seminaries and priestly vocation programs that form men for the ministerial priesthood.”

It was published in 2022 after reflection on the Holy See’s document on priestly formation, Ratio Fundamentalis Institutiones Sacerdotalis, released in 2016.

In his letter, Bishop Chylinski described recent changes in priestly formation at the seminary including introduction of a “propaedeutic” year for new seminarians.

The year “provides seminarians the basic groundwork” they need for priestly formation by laying “the foundation for a new way of life by developing a life of prayer, study, fraternity and appropriate docility to formation,” the bishop wrote.

After seminarians complete seven semesters of theology as the necessary courses for the Master of Divinity and potentially the Master of Arts degrees, they are ordained to the transitional diaconate.

They then reside at an archdiocesan parish and minister full-time under the supervision of a pastor for six months.

According to the letter, the Program of Priestly Formation calls for implementing a “vocational synthesis stage” of formation which includes the diaconate.

It is not a time for evaluation by the seminary but of “integration and transition into pastoral ministry,” the letter read.

Priestly ordination would typically follow the completion of this stage.

Bishop Chylinski indicated that changes to the schedule for ordination to the permanent diaconate are under consideration for spring of 2027.