Our Needs
Blackfriars relies greatly on donations to advance its mission.
Below you can read about our different needs – and how you can help.
Blackfriars General Fund
We’ll assign your gift to our greatest needs, developin Blackfriars during its ninth century of mission.
Blackfriars, following its 800th anniversary, wants to step up into its new century of mission.
Donations to our General Fund will be assigned to our areas of greatest need, helping us with our three strategic priorities:
- Scholarships: We want to continue to attract the best graduate students to Blackfriars Hall, and help them meet today’s financial challenges.
- Space: We increased and improved the physical space for our community and our educational mission, as well as maintaining our historic buildings. However, we are left with a debt to pay down, so all assistance is welcome.
- Stipends: We have established stipendiary posts for the friars and lay people who teach in our Studium, to ensure they can keep forming new generations of priests and developing as academics.
The Friars
General support for the priory community.
Blackfriars hosts a community of several dozen Dominican friars.
Every year we find ourselves challenged to meet their living costs, and maintain the historic buildings which are the home for the community and all who participate in our life.
Training future priests
Fund our formation of priests-to-be in Blackfriars Studium.
Blackfriars Studium is like a seminary for members of religious orders, preparing for priestly ordination. We train Dominicans and also Franciscans, Benedictines, Oratorians, and others.
Friars not just from Oxford, but from our priories in Cambridge, London and Leicester, work hard to give these future priests a firm grounding in philosophy and theology, and prepare them for the pastoral challenges they will face. However, our current model of low-level remuneration for this work is neither just nor sustainable, being insufficient to cover their basic living costs.
We want to continue to provide funded ‘lectorships’ that offer a fair stipend for the friars and lay people who teach in our Studium, to ensure they can keep on training new generations of priests.
Student Support Fund
Alleviate financial pressures on Blackfriars Hall students
Today’s students face many financial challenges. Blackfriars Student Support Fund lets alumni and other supporters provide help for those most in need. Your gifts help to relieve financial pressures so that students can focus on completing their studies.
donate now
Scholarships
Help Blackfriars Hall attract and support the best graduate students
As one of the smallest and least wealthy members of the collegiate Oxford University, Blackfriars is challenged to compete with our wealthy neighbours who can offer much assistance to students in the form of bursaries and scholarships.
We want to continue to attract the best graduate students to Blackfriars Hall, and help them meet today’s financial challenges, so we are seeking to fund scholarships. You can choose to support a scholarship in a subject that you regard as important, or just offer your general support in this area.
donate now
The Aquinas Institute
Help to promote the great intellectual legacy of St Thomas Aquinas within the modern University.
The Aquinas Institute is seeking funding partners who share our vision for excellent philosophical and theological teaching and research, inspired by the great legacy of St Thomas Aquinas, at the heart of the University of Oxford.
In a time when the modern academy gives less and less importance to its Christian intellectual heritage, we are seeking to bring the benefits of this fruitful perspective to contemporary academic study and conversation.
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The Las Casas Institute for Social Justice
Help us respond to today’s social challenges with fresh thinking drawn from the Catholic tradition.
The Las Casas Institute responds to the social challenges of today’s world, offering much-needed fresh and non-partisan thinking on difficult questions. It draws especially on the rich tradition of Catholic social thought and practice.
The Institute is now seeking significant funding for a multi-year plan to:
- Conduct research in a wide range of important areas
- Bring together and support otherwise isolated academics and practitioners.
- Disseminate the fruits of our research and of wider Catholic Social Teaching, engaging with policy-makers, business and community leaders, teachers and students.