Welcome
The Mater Ecclesiae Fund for Vocations is privileged to assist men and women to follow God's call to service in the Church through a life of consecration. We operate the St. Joseph Student Debt Relief Grant Program for religious life and the St. John Vianney Student Debt Relief Grant Program for the parish priesthood. These grants eliminate the delay many young people encounter as they struggle to pay off their student debts before they can enter religious life. A grant pays candidates' student loan payments while they are in formation for either religious life or the priesthood.
Watch our new video,
Missing Vocations,
which portrays the joy
of our grant recipients
and the great need that remains
to help more vocations come to fruition.
News
Click here for our news archive ...
November 2009
The founders of the MEFV, Corey & Katherine Huber, related their vocation story on Marcus Grodi's EWTN program The Journey Home on Monday, November 30th.
October 2009
We have changed our grant awarding schedule. We have dropped the summer award period and will only issue grants once a year in the winter. The August 1st award date for the summer period was very close to the entrance dates for orders with summer entrance dates. In some cases there are less than two weeks between August 1st and an entrance date. This short time for dealing with the outcome of an application to the MEFV was creating problems.
What was the winter award period has now become our single award period. The important dates for this award period have not changed. You can review them on our grantmaking schedule page. If you were denied a grant last summer, you will be permitted to reapply this winter.
August 2009
We managed to squeeze 8 new grants out of the funds available for our last award period. We are saddened by the necessity of turning away the other 20 applicants who are equally qualified and ready to begin religious life but for their student loans, but their annual loan payments of just under $100,000 were outside the Fund's reach.
You can download a PDF of our award press release for complete details.
Please Help
We are helping 50 men and women follow their vocations (and have helped another 21 to try their vocations). Each year we must raise the money necessary to make their student loan payments. These men and women pray each day for you, for the Church and for the world as they work to become priests, monks and brothers, and nuns and sisters.
You can read about some of these men and women on our vocation stories page.
That was the good news. The truly awful news is that we have had to turn away 58 young people who wanted to offer their lives to Christ, but could not because of their student debt! Will the Church lose these vocations?
Please help us help them by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Milestones
(Progress of MEFV grantees)
» On December 8th 2009, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the contemplative Dominican Nuns of Summit, NJ joyously recieved a new novice. Sr. Carri was clothed with the Dominican habit and took the religious name Sr. Mary Magadalene of the Immaculate Conception.
Read Sr. Mary Magadalene's vocation story.
» On July 27th 2009, Sr. Kathleen was clothed with the Dominican habit and took the religious name Sr. Constance as she entered the novitiate of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, TN. She received her St. Joseph grant in the Summer 2008 award period.