St. John's Seminary (California) - History

History

St. John's Seminary began teaching seminarians on September 12, 1939. Juan Camarillo, Jr. donated 100 acres (40 ha) of land from his Rancho Calleguas on March 3, 1927 with the specific desire to have the land used for a seminary named for St. John the Evangelist. On January 14, 1938, John J. Cantwell announced the planned construction of the seminary. The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada first accredited St. John's in 1976; it had previously been accredited by the American Association of Theological Schools and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Beginning in 1961, St. John's granted bachelor's degrees through its subsidiary St. John's Seminary College. Following a 2002 report from a task force appointed by Roger Mahony, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles closed the undergraduate portion of the seminary. Only 12 seminarians graduated in 2002, and the Archdiocese chose to focus solely on graduate training. The task force also scheduled a 2005 review to see if St. John's should be entirely closed with Loyola Marymount University taking over the school's functions; this shutdown has not come to pass. The diocese agreed to sell most of the seminary's land, including the area used for undergraduate study, in 2004, for a price which was dependent on the sort of zoning approval the land would receive.