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The Rev. George E. Schultze will be the new president-rector heading St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, the Archdiocese of San Francisco announced on Feb. 16.
Fr. Schultze, who has been at St. Patrick’s since 2005 as a faculty member and spiritual director, will take over the position on July 1.
A statement by the archdiocese says a search committee looked at priests across the country before recommending Fr. Schultze to the archbishop and the seminary’s board of trustees.
Fr. Schultze, a Jesuit, also served on the faculty and staff of the University of San Francisco College of Professional Studies for six years. He has been a Jesuit since 1984.
He grew up in Mountain View and attended St. Francis High School there. He is on the board of the Catholic Charities of the East Bay, and his biography on its website says his parents belonged to area labor unions, including the Operating Engineers Local 3, IBEW Local 2131, and the local cannery workers union.
He attended the New York State School of Industrial Relations at Cornell, received an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a doctorate in social ethics at the University of Southern California.
His research and teaching focus on family life, work life and the Catholic social doctrine, according to the biography.
The Rev. Daniel Donohoo, a graduate of St. Patrick’s Seminary who is currently a faculty member and dean of men, will become vice rector.
Fr. Schultze will be taking over when the members of the Sulpician order, who had run the seminary since its founding in 1898, leave at the end of the school year. It was announced on Oct. 21 that the six Sulpician faculty members and several administrators would leave at that time.
There are currently 63 seminary students, but in February San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath announced that at the end of this academic year he will transfer current seminarians and send future seminarians from his diocese to the University of Saint Mary of the Lake Mundelein Seminary of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
The Catholic San Francisco newspaper reported that most of the departing faculty members have been replaced and that Fr. Schultze plans to visit the bishops in other archdioceses and ask them to send their priests-in-training to St. Patrick’s.
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I was happy to read about the capable new president-rector that will soon take on the leadership role at St. Patrick’s Seminary. I appreciate that there will be many matters on the campus that will need his attention right away as he takes on the new responsibility. I however hope that among them will be the goal to evaluate and correct the extensive deferred maintenance of the architecturally attractive buildings. I hope he will reach out to meet and consult with the experienced people in the surrounding community who, I believe, would be happy to help him and his board develop the path to achieving the needed improvements.