Between Formation and Vulnerability: Psycho-Spiritual Wellbeing and Emotional Disclosure among Catholic Seminarians in Southeastern Nigeria

Catholic priestly formation seeks to integrate human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral development, but little is known about how seminarians in sub-Saharan Africa experience its psychological dimensions or how institutional and relational conditions shape emotional disclosure. This qualitative study explored how senior seminarians understand psycho-spiritual wellbeing and institutional, relational, spiritual, and socioeconomic factors that facilitate or constrain it. An Interpretive Description methodology was used in two Catholic major seminaries in Southeastern Nigeria. Nine participants volunteered: six final-year theology seminarians, who provided the primary experiential accounts, and three resident formators, who provided complementary institutional perspectives. Semi-structured interviews and institutional documents provided the data, which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were constructed. First, psycho-spiritual integration was uneven within a comprehensive four-pillar formation structure; human formation was viewed as foundational but historically underemphasised, while spiritual direction was valued but inconsistently accessed. Second, participants described movement from spiritual enthusiasm to routinised practice and spiritual dryness, alongside efforts to recover intentionality. Third, emotional concealment emerged as a deliberate strategy for managing perceived disclosure risks within an evaluative environment. Fourth, family financial responsibilities and pre-existing difficulties constrained wellbeing. Reviewed documents contained no explicit procedures for systematically assessing or supporting psycho-spiritual wellbeing. Findings suggest that wellbeing depends on relational safety, perceived confidentiality, authentic engagement, and contextual pressures, supporting clearer separation of confidential psychological support from formation evaluation and stronger operationalisation of human formation. The study highlights psycho-spiritual wellbeing as a relational and context-dependent dimension of priestly formation, indicating that formation systems must create conditions in which seminarians can seek psychological support without fearing adverse evaluative consequences.

Interpretive Description; psycho-spiritual wellbeing; seminary formation; emotional disclosure; relational safety

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