Fr. Sean O'Sullivan once held the record for youngest Member of Parliament ever elected in Canada. In 1972, barely 20 years old, he was elected to represent the riding of Hamilton.
Five years later, O'Sullivan was done with politics and entered St. Augustine's. In 1981 he was ordained. He became the director of vocations, publisher of The Catholic Register and the face of a youthful, confident Catholicism in Toronto. In 1983 he learned he had leukemia and fought it into remission. By 1986 he was a Member of the Order of Canada. But the cancer came back. He died, age 37, in 1989.
Cardinal Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino
Cardinal Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino is the archbishop of Caracas in Venezuela. He was for years the most prominent opponent of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez. From 1962 to 1965 the former seminary professor's road to priesthood passed through St. Augustine's.
Before the 2010 Venezuelan elections, Urosa Savino warned his countrymen against the Marxist inclinations of their peripatetic president. He called Cuban-inspired communism "fatal for all peoples."
Chavez found Urosa Savino so irksome he directed a special barrage of insults at the cardinal during celebrations of the country's bicentenary of independence in 2010. "This gentleman is unworthy of calling himself a cardinal," said Chavez. The president demanded the Vatican replace Urosa Savino.
That didn't stop the cardinal from saying a Mass for Chavez when the president died during the most recent conclave in Rome.
Cardinal Aloysius Matthew Ambrozic was one of 53 men ordained out of St. Augustine's in 1955, the largest graduating class in the seminary's history.
Cardinal Aloysius Matthew Ambrozic
Ambrozic might have been the reason some of those men made it to ordination day. The brilliant young immigrant was known for his quick grasp of philosophy, theology and languages. He tutored classmates through Latin while he was mastering Greek.
A significant New Testament scholar during his tenure as professor at St. Augustine's and the Toronto School of Theology, Ambrozic was plucked out of his academic world to be made an auxiliary bishop in 1976 and coadjutor archbishop of Toronto in 1986.
A man who never shied from controversy, Ambrozic was well known for his conservative opinions but less well known for turning up unannounced at shelters and drop-ins to serve food to the poor. He defended and promoted each wave of immigration that washed over Toronto, never forgetting his roots as a Slovenian refugee caught up in a displaced persons' camp at the end of the Second World War.
Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in 1998, where he contributed as a member of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants. He hosted World Youth Day in 2002.
Pere Athol Murray
Pere Athol Murray is the only St. Augustine's graduate in the Hockey Hall of Fame, but that is likely not his greatest accomplishment. The founder of Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Sask. (now known as Athol Murray College of Notre Dame), Murray lived his life by the motto he gave to the school — "Luctor et emergo," Struggle and emerge.
The college itself was a miracle. Founded in the midst of the Great Depression, Murray was determined that every kid who wanted an education should have one. He accepted sides of beef and buckets of coal in lieu of the $18 per month tuition. He initiated lengthy correspondence with leading figures of his time, including Winston Churchill, U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower and raised money for Notre Dame everywhere he went.
The resourceful, enthusiastic Murray was a rich kid from Toronto, educated by the Jesuits at Loyola College in Montreal. A quote from St. Augustine — "To him who does what in him lies, God will not deny His grace" — propelled Murray into St. Augustine's Seminary and his vocation. Ordained in 1918, he was loaned out to the diocese of Regina in 1922. When he landed in Wilcox, Murray discovered that the town's patron saint was St. Augustine.
His rough-hewn spirituality is memorialized by the Tower of God, an 18-metre concrete structure he erected in the middle of Wilcox. Written on the tower are Murray's words, "I don't give a damn what religion a guy belongs to. There is a God and I don't much care if you are a Catholic, Buddhist or Mohammedan as long as you believe in Him."
Through the decades, Murray coached the legendary Hounds, the college's junior hockey team that has sent more than 100 men to the National Hockey League.