About Us

The Sower is a nearly 90-year-old quarterly periodical published by the Maryvale Institute, a Catholic institution of higher education in theology and evangelization in England, which acquired The Sower in 1992. The Sower seeks to be a vital resource for catechetical leaders and catechists by providing them with inspiration and insights into the mysteries of the Catholic faith, and by assisting them in their ministry of handing on the faith.

English theologian, Canon Francis Drinkwater, founded The Sower in 1919. While it has always appealed to an international readership and circulation, it is rapidly gaining new readers in North America, through an agreement among the Maryvale Institute, Studium de Notre Dame de Vie of Venasque in France and Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, brought the three institutes together to promote authentic catechesis and the formation of catechists. Cardinal Schönborn told representatives of the institutions, "I know all three of you; you should know each other." After several years of discussions, they came together in 2003 for the first formal meeting of what they called a "catechetical friendship."

One of the first fruits of this relationship is that Franciscan University has taken responsibility for the promotion and distribution of The Sower in the United States and Canada, beginning in July of 2006. This arrangement with Franciscan has also allowed for more regular contributions from U.S. diocesan and parish catechetical leaders, including Archbishops Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., Raymond Burke of St. Louis, MO, and Jose Gomez of San Antonio, TX, and Bishops William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., and Samuel Aquila of Fargo, N.D.

To learn more about the three institutions involved in The Sower, click on the links below:

Maryvale Institute
http://www.maryvale.ac.uk



Franciscan University of Steubenville
http://www.franciscan.edu



Studium de Notre-Dame de Vie
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/studium.ndv/index.htm