Through the St. Joseph grant program, we seek to accelerate and to prevent the abandonment of vocations by guaranteeing the eventual retirement of the student loans of men and women who have generously answered a call to consecrated religious life within an Institute of Consecrated Life or a Society of Apostolic Life.
This grant program was started under the auspices of the Fraser Family Foundation in the summer of 2004. (When run by the Fraser Family Foundation, it was known as the Mater Ecclesiae Debt Relief Grant Program.)
As of July 2010, we have issued a total of 86 St. Joseph grants that enabled men and women to proceed with their discernment by entering formation and beginning a consecrated life of prayer for our Church and our world. Of those, 27 discerned their vocation lay elsewhere and 59 continue their formation with their religious order. Without these grants, most of those 59 individuals would still be struggling in the work-a-day world to pay down their debt and meet expenses.
We have carefully structured the St. Joseph grant program so as not to interfere with the discernment progress of grant recipients.
If you would like to help us with this important program, please see our support page.
Prospective applicants should read all the pages available under the menu items "Grant Programs" and "For Applicants" to fully inform themselves about the requirements for application.