Scalan - the secret Catholic college - marks 300 years
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A SECRET church college in the Braes of Glenlivet has celebrated its 300 anniversary.
The former seminary of Scalan, some eight miles from Tomintoul, was a training ground for priests during the long years when Catholicism was outlawed across Scotland.
To mark the occasion, a crowd of 260 worshippers, including the visiting Bishop of Detroit, travelled to the remote location for an anniversary Sunday mass.
Church spokesman Duncan McPherson said: "The seminary kept the faith burning throughout all those difficult years.
"Priests practicing Mass were punished with death, so if any strangers came some of them would hide while the others pretended to just be ordinary farmers.
"The seminary is not far from the Lecht, meaning that they would have been facing wintery conditions for five or six months a year with no such thing as central heating.
"Their faith must have been very strong to keep them going.
"Even now it’s a very remote place. The road runs out and you have to walk the last half-mile to get there."
Between 1716 and 1793, at which point the penal laws against Catholics were finally repealed, the seminary trained 64 priests.
At a recent meeting in the Vatican, Pope Francis was presented with a quaich and a bottle of Glenlivet Whisky as a reminder of the seminary at Scalan.
