Finbar Ryan, O.P., then Archbishop of Port-of Spain, as a diocesan seminary to prepare priests to serve in his archdiocese. Situated on the grounds of the Benedictine Abbey of Mt. Benedict in Tunapuna, Trinidad, and administered for almost thirty years by monks of that Abbey, the seminary was adopted in 1970 by the Antilles Episcopal Conference (AEC) and became the Regional Seminary to prepare priests to serve in the various dioceses of that conference. In the AEC General Meeting 2010 in Grenada it was decided that the Regional Seminary should be placed under the full and total jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Port of Spain and thereby reverted to a local diocesan Seminary. The Seminary of St John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs has been an Affiliate College of the University of the West Indies (the UWI) since 1970 therefore students who successfully complete the BA programme offered at the Seminary are awarded the BA in Theology by the UWI. In order to better coordinate the development of theological education and pastoral ministry training throughout the Archdiocese of Port of Spain the Seminary Board established a relationship with The Catholic Religious Education Development Institute (CREDI) via a Memorandum of Understanding in 2010, while retaining the Seminary’s affiliation to the UWI, which continues to award the BA in Theology to successful graduates of the BA (Theology) programme. The Seminary is staffed by clergy, both diocesan and religious, sisters and lay men and women from the dioceses and religious orders and congregations of the region. This tradition continues and currently there are staff members from Antigua, Jamaica, Guyana and St Vincent as well as from Trinidad. Presently, the majority of the student body is comprised of catholic lay people. In keeping with principles of Ecumenism enunciated in the Drecree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council and the Revised Ecumenical Directory (1993), the seminary also admits to its academic programmes students from other Christian denominations (especially those denominations which, together with the AEC, form part of the Caribbean Conference of Churches). There are also students from other Christian communities e.g. Anglicans, a Salvation Army Officer and an Evangelical Church preacher.
