Long-time King’s College prof honored with Spirit of Holy Cross Award

Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.

The Congregation of Holy Cross, United States Province of Priests and Brothers, announced that its Spirit of Holy Cross Awards honorees for the 2023-2024 academic year include Steven Seitchik, who served King’s College for more than 50 years as registrar, associate professor in the Department of Economics, and vice president for Business Affairs.

The awards are given annually to lay collaborators who faithfully serve the Province in the United States and abroad. The Spirit of Holy Cross Award acknowledges the critical role lay collaborators play in living out the vision and mission of Holy Cross founder Blessed Basil Moreau— to make God known, loved, and served through education, parish, and mission settings.

“We do not imagine that those who commit themselves in other ways to the following of Jesus are thereby hindered in their service of neighbor. On the contrary, we find in them willing and complementary partners in a shared mission. We want our vows, faithfully lived, to be a witness and call to them as their commitments, faithfully lived, are witness and call to us” (Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross, 5:44).

As vice president for Business Affairs, Seitchik represented King’s in all its business dealings, especially as it enhanced the campus by working with the city and neighbors to close a block of North Franklin Street and create O’Connor Park. Though he represented King’s at the highest levels, he was known for walking the campus and seemed to know every employee. He frequently attended King’s basketball games with his wife, Ellen.

Seitchik has been enthusiastically supportive of the Holy Cross mission at King’s, seeing in the congregation’s call to “educate minds and hearts” a concrete way to help “repair the world” (“tikkun olam”) — a cornerstone of his own Jewish faith and identity. That desire to help repair the world informed his support of Catholic education more generally. The congregation of which he was a board member, Temple Hesed, offered space in their synagogue which allowed The Nativity Miguel School of Scranton to open its doors in 2015. Steve’s compassion led him to reach out, not only in institutional, but in very personal ways, to those in the campus community who were facing difficulties, even after they left employment at the College.

The Spirit of Holy Cross Award honorees are recognized in their local communities by the Holy Cross ministry for which they work as part of the Congregation’s celebration of Blessed Basil Moreau’s life. At that time, they receive a proclamation of gratitude signed by the local superior that nominated them, and by the Rev. William M. Lies, C.S.C., Provincial Superior, on behalf of the entire U.S. Province.