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If there are in the seminary three apostolic men filled with humility, gentleness, patience, zeal, charity and a sense of poverty, with the knowledge and wisdom necessary for this godly enterprise, they would be enough to sanctify the entire diocese.– Father Olier
Jean Jacques Olier, born to a wealthy family in 1608, was a well-educated young man whose miraculous cure from deteriorating eyesight pointed him away from the ranks of the aristocratic clergy and toward priestly service to God and the poor. His interactions with Church luminaries like Vincent de Paul, Charles de Condren and Mother Agnes of Jesus (St. Agnes of Langeac) drew him into the center of a movement for spiritual renewal and religious reform in France.
Who We Are
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In
the 1630s, the priesthood in France was in disarray. The parish
priests were poorly prepared for their ministry, and most of the
hierarchy, drawn from the aristocracy, were supported by endowments
(benefices) associated with large land holdings.
Father
Olier wanted to reform the clergy—and eventually the Church
in France— by providing sound formation for priests. He established
a small seminary outside Paris in 1641. When he was named pastor
of St. Sulpice in Paris, he moved the seminary to the parish and
invited several other priests to join him in working at both the
parish and the seminary. The "Society of the Priests of the
Seminary of St. Sulpice" began and was dedicated to accepting
adult candidates from bishops throughout France and forming them
for priestly service in their home dioceses. In this, Fr. Olier
is credited with developing a new model of seminary, as a place
that started, not with local adolescents, but with men from different
places, whose vocations had already been discerned. 
A
century and a half later, the Sulpicians’ success in seminary
education attracted attention in the newly independent United States.
In 1790, there were only 35 priests ministering to the 30,000 Catholics
in the U.S. John Carroll, the first bishop of the U.S., asked the
Sulpicians to establish a seminary in his see city of Baltimore.
The Seminary of St. Sulpice, later renamed St. Mary’s Seminary,
opened in 1791 and was the first Catholic institution of higher
education in the U.S. (St. Sulpice opened one month before Georgetown.)
In the early 1800’s, the Sulpicians at St. Mary’s Seminary
helped Elizabeth Seton in the early stages of her apostolate with
the Sisters of Charity, and Sulpician Fr. James Joubert worked with
Mary Lange, a Haitian immigrant, to establish the first community
of black sisters in the U.S., the Oblate Sisters of Providence.