Seton Hall University, together with Church, community and government representatives from colleges and universities across the nation, gathered Nov. 4 for a Mass and ceremony to mark the investiture of Msgr. Joseph R. Reilly, S.T.L., Ph.D., as the university’s 22nd president.
Msgr. Reilly’s appointment marks the return of a priest-president to Seton Hall, South Orange, which has been a hallmark of the university for 146 years of its 168-year history.
Among those in attendance from the Diocese of Camden were Bishop Dennis Sullivan; Father Robert Hughes, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia; and Father Adam Cichoski and Father Joshua Nevitt, vocations director and associate director, respectively.
Bishop Sullivan gave the Invocation at the Ceremony of Investiture. Four of the Diocese’s seminarians attend the university’s College Seminary of the Immaculate Conception at Saint Andrew’s Hall.
“Half of my life has been spent here,” Msgr. Reilly said in his investiture address. “[Seton Hall] is a place of encounter, of education, of enrichment, of empathy, edification and equity. It was here, in this place, where I discovered the passion and purpose for my life as a priest.”
“Seton Hall is a community of people, with fundamental beliefs about God, the human person, the world and the values that underly all of those things that are founded in faith. This is what sustains each one of us in our lives here at Seton Hall,” he continued.
Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., chair of Seton Hall’s Board of Trustees, president of the Board of Regents and archbishop of Newark, served as the principal celebrant and homilist.
“Msgr. Reilly’s selection as Seton Hall’s leader follows decades of devoted service to the university and its students, and through them, to the world,” he said. “I am confident his presidency will produce even more remarkable achievements.”
Msgr. Reilly attended Seton Hall Prep and graduated from the university in 1987. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Newark in 1991. In 1995, he joined the staff of Seton Hall Prep, where he served as a faculty member and chaplain. Seven years later, he returned to the university as rector of the College Seminary at Saint Andrew’s Hall. In 2012, he was named rector/dean of Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, where he served until 2022. After a year’s sabbatical, he undertook his most recent post as vice provost of academics and Catholic identity.
Article courtesy of Seton Hall University.
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