Malaga Seminary

The Málaga Diocesan Seminary is a center for priestly formation in the diocese of Málaga, which houses young people in training to be priests. It is headquartered in Malaga, Spain, and its official name is Diocesan Conciliar Seminary of San Sebastián and Santo Tomás de Aquino.

The buildings that make up the Diocesan Seminary complex, also located in a privileged location of mountains and vegetation, constitute a monumental sample of the official architecture of the beginning of the century XX.

History of the building

At the beginning of 1919, Bishop San Manuel González García called the engineers Rafael Benjumea and Fernando Loring, who provided him with draftsmen for the construction of the roads and the necessary facilities for the urbanization of the land.

The bishop laid the cornerstone of the new seminary on May 16, 1920.

It is in the regionalist and Neo-Mudejar style. It was designed by Fernando Guerrero Strachan, Rafael Benjumea Burín and Fernando Loring Martínez. It was built between 1921 and 1924.

At the request of Saint Manuel González, the rector visited other study centers, especially the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid, to improve the seminary. In addition, the seminarians could go to study at the Comillas Pontifical University and the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, for which they stayed at the Pontifical Spanish College of San José in that city.

On February 11, 1926, he was visited by the King and Queen of Spain, Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia.

San Manuel González wanted to consecrate the diocese of Malaga to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom he was very devoted. On November 20, 1927, a pontifical mass was held commissioned by the Archbishop of Granada, Vicente Casanova y Marzol. After the mass, a three meter high statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus holding the Sacred Form in one hand and the Cross in the other was blessed. The statue was then placed on top of the seminary church and Bishop San Manuel González read the consecration. The image was demolished by anti-clerical groups during the Spanish civil war. It was placed again on the church on July 22, 1939. The seminary was saved from the burning of convents in 1931 that affected 41 religious buildings in Malaga. However, in 1936 the rector, Blessed Enrique Vidaurreta Palma, and other professors and seminarians were murdered in hatred of the faith, and some of them were later beatified.

Between 1951 and 1965 it was enlarged by the architect Enrique Atencia Molina, Ángel Herrera Oria being bishop.