Georgetown: America‘s Oldest Catholic College

America’s first Bishop, John Carroll, was a Jesuit until the order was suppressed in 1773. One of his great ambitions was to start a Catholic college in the United States. In 1789, not long after he became bishop, he secured property for such a school in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. On this day in 1791 Georgetown College opened under the direction of the Sulpician Fathers who had just come from France. In 1805, after the Jesuit ordfer was partially restored (it was completely restored in 1815) the Jesuit took over control of the college. The Sulpicians were happy to give up this work, as their main apostolate was (and is) seminary education. In 1817 the college awarded its first baccalaureate degrees. A medical school started in 1849, a law school in 1870, and in 1919 Georgetown established the first foreign service school in the United States. This last move made Georgetown into the international university it is today.