The day starts early at the St. Willibrord major seminary in Heiloo. Morning prayers and mass have just ended, inside seminarians are preparing for the morning lectures. The building is silent, save for the soft hum of a coffee machine and echoing footsteps.
Between the walls where a nunnery used to be located, 34-year-old Nico Vennik from Middenmeer stays in one of the rooms of the seminary.
He once graduated as a chemist at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, now he is training to become a priest here.
“I liked the study, was good at it, but it didn’t give me satisfaction. That raised the question: what am I going to do next?” He indicates that the idea of becoming a priest did not immediately occur to him. “I was still very searching, and even thought about becoming a teacher. The plan to become a priest was not at all at the time, that actually only came much later,” says Vennik.
Grew up with the faith
Growing up in Middenmeer, in a religious family, Vennik has always been involved in the church. “I was raised Catholic at home. My mother is of Polish descent and my father was baptized later in life. I was also baptized myself, took communion and confirmation, and was an altar boy in the parish of our village for many years.”
In his younger years, nothing indicates that he would really focus entirely on faith. Yet the World Youth Days – a festival for young people organized every three years by the Roman Catholic Church – in Madrid, Panama and Krakow impress him. “That made me grow in faith,” says Vennik.