CLERGY NIGHT and seminary support

Clergy Night is a KofC Greater Cleveland Chapter activity celebrating vocations, featuring speakers on vocations and clergy life. Councils invite and provide dinners for priests, brothers, deacons, and seminarians.  This is an occasion for councils to award stipends to needy seminarians.  Knights purchase their own dinners.  Seminarians wait tables and provide clean up.  Clergy Night is celebrated on the last Friday in January. A Clergyman of the Year is named.

In 2023, Gilmour Council again assisted 4 seminarians with awards of $500 each.

Gilmour Council provides $500 to each of 4-5 students at Wickliffe’s Borromeo or St. Mary Seminary. In December, a designated knight asks the school administration to list its neediest seminarians. The council may elect to support one or more students somehow associated with the council or its parishes or a Gilmour brother knight. The council may also elect to support a seminarian who has requested help directly. Time commitment is minimal; the knight who obtains the seminarian list presents it to the officers for award selections in January. These checks are awarded at the Clergy Night dinner. Gilmour #310 typically assists (4) seminarians with $500 each.

Gilmour Council separately contributes over $1,000 annually to the state council’s Support Our Seminarians program and typically donates $600 directly to the annual Bishop’s Brunch gala.