Father Colin Kay
SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — After serving for seven months in an interim role, Father Colin Kay has been appointed vice president for mission and ministry at Seton Hall University.
“Father Colin’s energy, outreach and care for our students has demonstrated the strength of Seton Hall’s Catholic identity during this most unusual year,” SHU President Joseph E. Nyre said. “I am pleased that he will continue to lead mission and ministry as we grow more deeply in faith and a shared sense of community.”
Prior to his interim appointment, Kay had served as director of campus ministry since 2019. His selection was made with the endorsement of Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark and the Seton Hall priest community.
Under his interim leadership, Mass attendance has remained strong, despite the university’s planned reduction in density. COVID-19 restrictions have been followed with great care, regardless of whether Mass was celebrated indoors or outside.
Kay’s relationship with the university began when he was a child in the Ivy Hill neighborhood. He attended Seton Hall Prep when it was on the South Orange campus and began studying at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology in 1988 after four years in the Army. He returned to Seton Hall in the late 1990s as a writer and editor in the office of the president, and was ordained for the Archdiocese of Newark in 2005.
In his full-time role, Kay will continue to facilitate mission training and recruitment at the university and work with students through any number of outreach initiatives that hold Catholicism at its core. He will remain in the role of director of the Center for Vocation and Servant Leadership and supervise the work of the university chaplain, South Orange Campus Ministry, Division of Volunteer Efforts and the chaplain of the Interprofessional Health Sciences Campus in Nutley-Clifton.
In addition, Kay will continue to serve as liaison with the Archdiocese of Newark on behalf of the office of the president, and will work with the minister to the priest community and director of the Center for Catholic Studies on mission-related events, lectures and programs.
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