The Lorenzo Mission Institute values the presence of the personnel in the formation of future priests. The responsibility of forming priests does not only belong to the bishop, the priests, and those in charge of their discipline but it belongs also to the cooperation and collaboration of the personnel. There are three important dimensions involved here:

1. Collective Effort- the formation of the seminarians happens in a collective concern and a concerted effort between the ordained and the lay personnel. The Human, Spiritual, Intellectual, and Pastoral areas of formation can be wholistically achieved with the cooperation of the lay personnel assigned in the seminary. The Ratio Fundamentalis of 2016 explicitly said that the responsibility of forming priests is a shared responsibility. This shared responsibility includes the lay personnel who are present in the seminary working for the benefit of priestly formation. It clarifies that: “the members of the diocesan community to which the candidate belongs share responsibility for priestly formation at different levels, and according to different ways and competencies: the Bishop, as the pastor responsible for the diocesan community; the presbyterate, as the place of fraternal communion in the exercise of the ordained ministry; the community of Seminary formators, who provide spiritual and pedagogical formation; the professors, who provide the intellectual support that makes integral formation possible; the administrative personnel, the professionals and specialists who contribute their own witness of faith and life, and their expertise; and finally, the seminarians themselves, as protagonists of the process of reaching integral maturity, along with their families, their home parish, as well as associations, movements or other ecclesial institutions” (Ratio Fundamentalis 127).

2. Formative Community. The seminary is a formative community (Ratio Fundamentalis 139). As a formative community, it involves three important aspects: first, a formative community exists in a particular context. The context of interpersonal relationship, communication, and formation is necessary for formation. No formation can ever exist without solid and meaningful relationship in the seminary. There should be a conducive atmosphere for study, prayer, physical and interpersonal development. A community that is formative in nature will always be able to form an effective and holy priest in the future; second, a formative community is clear of agents of formation. A community of persons is essential in the formation of future priests in order to form a community of disciples. The community of formators is widened and extended to lay personnel working in the seminary. Thus, the lay personnel are considered as “formators” in a sense because the “community of formators operates within the wider context of the formative community” (Ratio Fundamentalis 139); third, a formative community looks forward for mission in the church. Seminary formation is a missionary formation. It prepares future missionaries for the Church. Thus, lay personnel are missionaries themselves working for the future of the Church’s ordained ministers. The Ratio Fundamentalis 139 says that the formative community will suffer without the cooperation of everybody. “The Bishop, formators, professors, administrative personnel, employees, families, parishes, consecrated persons, specialists, and above all the seminarians themselves, of course, since formation will suffer without their full cooperation” (Ratio Fundamentalis 139).

3. Pastoral Concerns- the presence of lay personnel in the seminary is beneficial to every seminarian. Their presence will illustrate one the future missions of the pastor in the parish which is the healthy collaboration of priests with the lay people in the parish. The atmosphere and disposition a seminarian in his interpersonal life with lay employees in the seminary will be a foreshadowing attitude he will have in the parish work. Thus, the seminarians have to develop a meaningful pastoral relationship with the personnel in the seminary. The lay personnel working well for the formation of the seminarians are part of the flock Christ has entrusted to priest formators. They have to be taken cared of and to be regarded as important part of a seminary community. The Ratio Fundamentalis 139 stated that it should be clear to the seminarians that the employees in the seminary “should be aware of the educational function they have and the importance of the integrity of their lives.”