EDINBURGH, Scotland (RNS/ENI) The 300-year old tradition of training men for the Roman Catholic priesthood in Scotland is coming to an end with the closure of the country’s last remaining seminary, Scotus College in Glasgow.

Starting this month, the nine remaining candidates will join 11 seminarians studying at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome — a strong indicator of the lack of Scottish men signing up for the priesthood.

Priests now working at Scotus will return to parish duties in Scotland where there is a nationwide shortage of clergy.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, has described the situation as “an alarm call to the laity that it is time for volunteers to step forward and be prepared to be trained in order to be able to support their priests …”

“At the moment, there are no specific schemes or plans in place for the recruitment and training of volunteers,” Simon Dames, press officer at the Scottish Catholic Media Office in Glasgow, told Ecumenical News International. “At present there are two routes which can be taken: firstly, the priesthood and secondly, the permanent deaconate.”

If the church finds a surge in priestly vocations, the bishops’ conference would review the situation, he said.

Historian Tom Devine said, however, that the closure of Scotus College marks “a return to the past” when training overseas was the norm.

“I think the clergy should be educated internationally,” he told Glasgow’s Herald newspaper. “But it’s also a very telling symbolic manifestation of the shortage of priests.”

A quarter of a century ago, there were 136 candidates studying for the priesthood in Scottish seminaries. Scotus College was officially opened in 1993 as the first national seminary in Scotland. It traces its history to 1774, when a remote underground seminary was established at a time when Catholics were persecuted in Scotland.