Over the past 40 years, hundreds of people have come to the Missionary Institute. Seven of them became Bishops. Some of them became martyrs, includtng three priests who gave their life for the cause of faith and justice — in Algeria in 1994 Fr. Christian Chessel M.Afr.; in Uganda in 2004 Fr. Declan O’Toole MHM, and, a just couple of  months ago in Kenya, Fr. Martin Addaie M.Afr. They fulfilled the prophecy of Cardinal  Heenan in 1969, when he told the students at the official opening of the Missionary Institute London (M I L) that martyrdom is a grace reserved for few, and that some of them might become martyrs.

As teh MIL prepare for its closing ceremonies, its former president,  Larr Nemer, says it should not be allowed to just fade away  without being noticed. Nemier describes the MIL as a unique institution, born of the second Vatican Councel’s call for collaboration. Nowhere else in the world have  missionary congregations come together to form a theological school in which misslon has heen at the heart of  the curriculurn and in the ethos of the school. He attributes this to the faculty, most of whom have had extensive missionary experience.

The MIL was initiated by the Mill Hill Missionaries and  the White Fathers at the end of the 1960s, when they realised that the juxtapositon of their two lage seminanes in north Londen was wasteful. The Second Vatican Council spoke about pooling resources, such as seminaries and other centres of training, and this inspired the two rectors at the time to think boldly. Patrick Fitzgerald  M.Afr, who was rector at St Edward’s College in Totteridge. and James Cowan MHM, who was rector of St Joseph’s College, became the promoters of an idea that stirred considerable interetst among the missionary Societies.

A meeting was convened af St Josephs College for those interested in the project and representatives attended from the Mill Hill  Missionaries, the Missionaries of Africa, the Consolata Missionaries, the Comboni Missionaries, the Spiritans, the Divine Word Mis sionaries and the Society of African Missions.  It was to become a milestone in the h istory of the missionary  endeavour in England and Wales. Academic activ ities started soon afterswards on the premises of the two Colleges.

Within a couple of years,  these seven Missionarv societies gave their definitive cornmitment as founders of what  came to be
known as the Missinary Institute London (MIL), officially declared open by Cardinal Heenan  in September 1969. The trustees made it clear that the mandate of the Missionay Inslitute was to assure the young generation of rn issionaries a solid academic training and at the same time to guarantee a place to all the participating societies on equal footing.

In the middle of the 1970s, St Mary’s Abbey School (Mill Hill) ran into difilculties when its Franciscan Sisters found themselves facing the prohibitive cost of modernisation. The school was sited just on top of the hill and in the middie of the area where various houses of formation were located. It was an ideal place to create a basis of independence for the MIL. The trustees agreed and the purchase took place in January 1977. For the Franciscans it was “an answer to prayer” and for the MIL “a godsend”.

The structure of MIL was consolidated first by affiliation with Leuven University in 1974 and then, 20 years later, by the validation of core programmes by Middiesex University in 1995. Even here, the missionaries proved to be faithful to their nature and vocation as they broke new ground and opened new horizons.

The collaboration with the local secular University of Middiesex produced injust 12 years 207 graduates. The possibility of the MiL being able to offer a master’s degree became a reality in June 1996 when Middlesex University validated the programme in Applied Theology (Peace and Justice and Mission Studies).

One of the constant preoccupations of the staff was to preserve the pride of place for mission in the theological programmes; and certainly the short life of the Missionary Institute contributed in a variety of ways to rekindling the spirit of mission in Britain. After1995, when the Theology for Ministry course was validated by Middiesex University, the MIL was opened wide to a variety of ministries ordained and  non-ordairted (a kind of ”polytechnic of ministries”). It was apractical answer to the dream of the Episcopal Conference in the document  “The Sign we Give” of a setting in which clerics and lay people are trained together for their different but correlated ministries.
Less visibly, the MIL also played a very important role in being the academic presence of missionaries in the local Church and British society. Eamonn O’Brien, a Columban missionary and lecturer at the MIL, makes the point that this presence was sought and gladly given at many levels, and at lectures and theological conferences throughout the country,

There have been about 2,500 students at  the MIL and nearly 700 of them have been ordained to the priesthood. But things have changed dramatically over these last few decades. Superior General of the Mill Hill Missionaries, Tony Chantry, says that a new missionary imagination is needed and we have to face the challenge to train missionaries in other areas of the world as we respond to the reality of our changing times. In recent years, the majority of the clerical students of the founding societies have not come from Britain or Europe, and the societies have gradually begun to move their programmes of study and formation to areas of the world where their candidates originate from.

In Africa, the missionary societies are engaged in an ambitious educational prograrnme. Universities are being opened in Sudan, Ethiopia, Zambia and other countries. The extensive MIL library will be donated to the Episcopal Conference of Zambia for the first Catholic university in the country, while Tangaza College in Nairobi provides a solid academie training for a thousand students of theology from many missionary societies.
Forty years on, the scale of history is definitively quite a short time, a fragment. The doors of the MIL may be closing, but the idea of pooling resources such as seminaries and other centres of training community lives on in these initiatives.

Danilo Castello is the president of the Missionary Institute London.