St. Mary’s Mission House founded in Techny, Illinois
The first class of six began on February 2, 1909 on the fourth floor of St. Joseph’s, with Rev. Peter Janser SVD as rector and Rev. August Loechte SVD as prefect. In April the seminary relocated to a brick farmhouse opposite Techny’s railroad station, where the chicken coop and basement had been outfitted as sleeping quarters. Chicago Archbishop James Quigley, along with a retinue of some of the area's most important Catholics, arrived at Techny on April 26 for the dedication.
The seminary’s location became an early problem. By the end of the spring semester St. Mary’s boasted a class of 11, and by the winter of 1910, 16 students and their instructors lived at the farmhouse. The space was cramped and drafty, with students writing that during winter, ice would form on the walls and wash water kept in the rooms would freeze overnight. As such, the seminarians were again moved to St. Joseph’s while a permanent home for St. Mary’s was considered in New York, Ohio, and Iowa. The SVD general council finally decided that the closure of St. Joseph’s would be necessary for the good of the mission house, and in 1912, three years after its founding, St. Joseph’s was dissolved and St. Mary’s found its permanent home.
By 1921, the year of St. Mary’s first ordination class, over 70 new high school students entered Techny to begin their long journey to the missionary priesthood. This brought the number of seminarians to about 170 in all. At its height, the Techny community was immense. In 1955, 345 priests, Brothers, and students lived on its campus. It was largely self-sufficient, with a cadre of religious Brothers producing the community’s own food, furniture, clothing, electricity, and heat. The campus contained not only a seminary but also a farm, a garden center, a post office, a number of workshops, a printing press, a hotel-style guesthouse, and a retirement home for lay persons.
The building program that had begun with the construction of St. Joseph’s continued unabated through the 1920s. Techny’s distinctive twin towers and the seminary’s final wing were all completed in rapid succession. On August 22, 1918, ground was broken for a large chapel running east from the towers. The renowned church architect Hermann J. Gaul was retained to design and construct it, and the first Eucharistic liturgy was celebrated at Techny’s Chapel of the Holy Spirit on June 18, 1923.
St. Mary’s initially accepted high school-age boys as part of its minor seminary program, though that program ended in 1937 and was moved to Holy Ghost Mission House in East Troy, WI. Brother candidates continued their high school education at Techny until 1968.
The major seminary program (or theologate) at St. Mary’s was the final step before ordination and was comprised of four years of theological education. In the early years this meant roughly ten ordinations per year, but at its peak in 1960, 30 new SVD priests graduated from St. Mary’s. By the late 1960s however, changes in the Catholic Church and the larger American society, coupled with the aging seminary infrastructure, forced province administration to consider a new model for the major seminary program. In 1970, St. Mary’s closed as a seminary after 61 years. The theologate relocated to Chicago Union Theological Seminary in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where it is still located today.
Today, Techny acts as the administrative seat for the SVD Chicago Province, and a large SVD community of both active and retired priests and Brothers call it home. While two wings of the former seminary building were demolished in the 1970s, the Chapel of the Holy Spirit remains the location for ordinations and other celebrations, while its adjacent wing acts as a conference and retreat center.