St. Louis school gets Lilly grant

National Catholic Reporter, July 30, 2004 by Dennis Coday

ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- The Aquinas Institute, a Catholic graduate school of theology, was awarded a $1.7 million Lilly Endowment grant to train lay Catholics for ministry.

In the five-year initiative, known as the Apollos Project, 35 area parishes are to serve as incubators for a model of ministry in which pastors and professionally trained lay people form pastoral teams. A statement from the school said this model "has been loosely forming itself for decades but is not yet organized or widely identified."

Thirty-five lay people chosen by their parishes as candidates for ministry will receive fellowships to Aquinas. Twenty-five fellows will already have worked or volunteered in their parishes but will not have pursued theology studies. Ten fellows will emerge through a more extensive process in which parishes assess their needs and identify among parishioners a candidate for theological study and ministry.

Fellows will work part-time at their parishes and become full-time employees when they graduate. Parishes are in the dioceses of Belleville and Springfield in Illinois and Jefferson City, Springfield-Cape Girardeau and St. Louis in Missouri.