For one hundred years, 63 bishops and 4 cardinals have passed through its chapel and classrooms. The institution currently has more than 700 seminarians.
Newsroom (10/07/2025, Gaudium Press) For 100 years, Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu, Nigeria, has stood out as a center of excellence in the formation of future priests. Through its chapel and classrooms, the institution has welcomed 4 cardinals, 14 archbishops, 35 bishops, and thousands of priests, not only for the Church of Nigeria, but also for Sierra Leone and Cameroon.
The institution currently has more than 700 seminarians: 548 diocesan and the rest from eight different congregations, which entrust the formation of their religious to this seminary.
The seminary celebrated its centenary last year and was created, like so many in Africa, on the initiative of a missionary. It was the Vicar Apostolic of Southern Nigeria, the Spiritan missionary Joseph Shanahan, who inaugurated it in 1924.
The institute was first located in Onitsha and then moved to various locations, including Igbariam, Eke, and Ogui, due to space constraints. It finally settled in its current location in Enugu in 1951, dedicated to Jeanne Bigard.
The name Jeanne Bigard is a tribute of gratitude to the founder of the Pontifical Work of St. Peter the Apostle for vocations in mission countries.
Since its foundation, it has received decisive help every year, fruit of the generosity of thousands of faithful Catholics from all over the world who have considered that the greatest gift that can be given to a young and dynamic Church, such as the Nigerian one, is well-trained and holy priests.
Jeanne Bigard dedicated her life to supporting the formation of priests.
Jeanne Bigard was born in Normandy, where St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the patroness of the missions, was born years later. Her youth coincided with the full development of the missionary cooperation network of modern times, promoted by so many foundresses and founders, and, above all, by Blessed Pauline Jaricot and Bishop de Forbin-Janson, also founders of what would become the Pontifical Mission Societies.
Together with her mother, Stephanie Bigard, Jeanne dedicated herself to helping the missionaries, corresponding with many of them. It was precisely a letter, which they received on June 1, 1889, that was the seed of everything.
The bishop of Nagasaki told them to assist the Japanese seminarians rather than the missionaries. Many people were already helping the missionaries.
This is how Jeanne Bigard found her vocation: to dedicate her life to the whole missionary world in need of priests. The Work she created, the present Pontifical Work of St. Peter the Apostle, began with various initiatives such as perpetual scholarships, adoptions of seminarians, prayer intentions, and ways of raising donations.
Six years after its creation, in 1895, it had a thousand associates and a long list of scholarships, worth one hundred thousand francs, in favor of Asian and African seminarians. It continued to grow until 1922, when Pope Pius XI made it his own, something that Jeanne lived with great joy, since she would not die until 1934.
Last year, this Work supported 778 seminaries, which welcomed 82,859 candidates. The thousands of small grants that have reached so many places in the world over the years have borne the stamp and were in some way a memorial to Jeanne Bigard.
With information from Zenit.
Compiled by Dominic Joseph
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