Archdiocese Will Shutter High School Seminary : Catholicism: Our Lady Queen of Angels is seen as a too-costly conduit for priesthood candidates.

MISSION HILLS —  Saying there are more cost-efficient ways to recruit young candidates for the priesthood, the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese has decided to close its 40-year-old high school seminary here in July.

About 150 students are currently enrolled at Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary, located near the San Fernando Mission. In recent years, about half of each graduating class at the four-year school would continue priestly studies at the college level.

“It was a very difficult decision, especially after 40 years,” said Auxiliary Bishop Armando X. Ochoa, who heads the archdiocese’s San Fernando Pastoral Region and works out of an office near the school.

“Basically, when push came to shove we had to ask ourselves whether this was the most effective way to reach high school candidates for the priesthood,” he said.

The plans, announced Friday in the archdiocese’s weekly newspaper, The Tidings, did not say what future use will be made of the seminary complex.

The all-male seminary, which houses students Sundays through Thursdays, became a co-ed campus this year when some of its buildings were used to serve students from nearby Alemany High School. Alemany, which was damaged in the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake, will be rebuilt and reoccupied eventually.

But the quake-enforced accommodation was greeted in good spirits by the seminarians as well as Alemany students, officials said.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony told the newspaper that other dioceses also have closed high school seminaries but many have not compensated with other recruiting programs. The archdiocese also announced a new program to identify and encourage priesthood prospects in its large system of Catholic high schools.

“We need more priests,” Mahony said. “And we need to look at those efforts that will result in helping us to attain that goal.”

Bishop Ochoa said that after the Northridge earthquake brought extensive damage to buildings in the Valley, “the cardinal felt it was an opportune time to look at all the properties in the San Fernando Valley area.”

Although the seminary itself did not suffer serious damage, an archdiocesan committee recommended to Mahony in late August that the seminary campus be closed for reasons of cost, according to Ochoa.

The board of Our Lady Queen of Angels High School Seminary voted 9 to 2 to endorse the committee recommendation.

The die was cast, Ochoa said, when the Priests’ Council, an advisory body to the cardinal, voted unanimously to close the school at its meeting this week. Faculty, students and their parents were told the same day that the cardinal had approved the decision.

The recommendation calls for the archdiocese to make every effort to relocate current seminary students to other Catholic high schools.