St Patrick’s National Seminary is a Catholic centre of priestly formation since 1795. The seminary is part of St Patrick’s College, which comprises both the National Seminary and Pontifical University.

The National Seminary’s primary mission is to serve the church in Ireland by forming candidates for the Catholic priesthood. Saint Patrick’s National Seminary functions as the principal centre (institution) of priestly formation on the island of Ireland for all the Irish dioceses. Seminarians from overseas dioceses and religious congregations are also welcome having met the admission requirements of the seminary and received a nomination from their Ordinary.

Rooted in the apostolic community gathered around Jesus Christ, The seminary seeks to form future priests who will hand on the life and joy of the Gospel and the tradition of the Church’s faith i n the mission of the new evangelisation well into the future.

To accomplish this, St. Patrick’s National Seminary directs a programme of human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral formation that is rooted in the principles outlined for the formation of priests in the circumstances of the present day in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Pastores dabo vobis, I will give you shepherds (1992); the Ratio Universalis, The Gift of the Priestly Vocation (2016) and the Ratio Nationalis, Programme for the Formation of Priests in Irish Seminaries. Through the integration of these four dimensions or areas of formation, the National Seminary aims to form priests according to the heart of Jesus the Good Shepherd.

Since 1896 Saint Patrick’s College Maynooth has also been a university with Pontifical Faculties of Theology, Canon law and Philosophy.