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The project to train vulnerable young foreigners in Almeria Seminary is moving forward
The Almeria Seminary, which is closed since 2021 plans to begin a project that will provide training to young foreigners who are vulnerable. Some parents from the nearby Diocesan College have strongly criticised the initiative. The project will still go ahead even though no date has yet been confirmed.
When asked about the project during a press conference on Thursday 22 January, organised in the Casa Sacerdotal, the Bishop of Almeria, Antonio Gómez Cantero, acknowledged that it is a “slower” procedure than he would like. “If you want to do formal training, you need the Junta de Andalucía and prepare the documents so that the boys who go there to study for three months have formal training, that is to say, that they have a degree”, explained Gómez Cantero. He did mention that “more and better progress is being made”.
Gómez Cantero confirmed that, along with this project promoted by the Jesuit migrant service (SJM-Almeria), four nuns from the order of the Misioneras de Cristo Jesús, each of them from a different origin in Spain, Africa and Asia, will move into the Almeria Seminary building. The building will need some renovations to be inhabitable. This includes modernising the heating.
The project focuses on the training and labour insertion of migrants exposed to conditions of exclusion, many of them living in shantytowns and other forms of substandard housing in the region of Níjar and Poniente Almeriense, explained the Bishopric of Almería in its presentation.
The project will be led by SJM-Almería and the ECCA Social Foundation and will have a team with solid experience. Its director is Fátima Santaló-Ossorio, from the Sacred Heart order, who closely linked to the diocese and recognised for her work at the head of the Bantabá centre in Las Norias.
