Welcome
The Mater Ecclesiae Fund for Vocations is privileged to assist men and women to follow God's call to service in the Church through a life of consecration. We operate the St. Joseph Student Debt Relief Grant Program for religious life and the St. John Vianney Student Debt Relief Grant Program for the parish priesthood. These grants eliminate the delay many young people encounter as they struggle to pay off their student debts before they can enter religious life. A grant pays candidates' student loan payments while they are in formation for either religious life or the priesthood.
Over at the President's Blog ...
- Visit with Br. John Pio
- Visit with Sr. Mary Isabel and other Menlo Park Dominicans
- Visits with the Servants of the Lord and the OCD Carmelites
- Visit with Sr. Angela and the Novitiate of the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles
- Visit to the El Carmelo retreat center of the Carmelite Friars
- Photo Essay of First Profession of Sr. Mary Magdalene
News
Record Number of Applications Received
We have received 43 applications for our 2012 grant awards. The student loans held by these applicants totals $1.6 million. The annual cost of issuing grants to all applicants would be $216,000. It would be a small miracle if we could meet just one fifth of this demand. A miracle made possible by the generosity of you and our other donors. Please pray to the Lord of the Harvest for a big miracle and consider continuing or increasing your generosity towards the work of enabling vocations.Fall 2011 Newsletter Available
Our fall newsletter has been mailed to our donors and friends. The highlights are an interview with Sr. Mary Benedicta, now solemnly professed with the Cistercian Nuns of the Valley of Our Lady Monastery and an introduction to the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word in Birmingham. You can download a copy here (pdf).
Click here for our news archive ...
Watch our video,
Missing Vocations,
which portrays the joy
of our grant recipients
and the great need that remains
to help more vocations come to fruition.
Please Help
We are helping 67 men and women follow their vocations (and have helped another 39 to try their vocations). Each year we must raise the money necessary to make their student loan payments. These men and women pray each day for you, for the Church and for the world as they work to become priests, monks and brothers, and nuns and sisters.
You can read about some of these men and women on our vocation stories page.
That was the good news. The truly awful news is that we have had to turn away 75 young people who wanted to offer their lives to Christ, but could not because of their student debt! Will the Church lose these vocations?
Please help us help them by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Milestones
(Progress of MEFV grantees)
» On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception Dominican Sr. Mary Magdalene of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary (Summit, NJ) made her first profession of vows.