In 1855, Father Pamphilus da Magliano and three Franciscan friars came to Western New York at the invitation of John Timon, Bishop of Buffalo, and Utica landowner Nicholas Devereux to establish a Catholic college and seminary. They formed the nucleus of the group of friars who created St. Bonaventure’s College. On Oct. 4, 1858, the Feast of St. Francis, the formal dedication of the new school was held on the tract of land donated by Devereux. It was then that... Read more

Mankind’s belief in God is a rebuke to, and a condemnation of, the careless atheist. For it is the height of rashness or of pride to assume without investigation that so large a part of the race is giving credit to an illusion, for the existence of which no rational grounds can be assigned. Ronald A. Knox, The Belief of Catholics Read more

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Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saints, by Pietro Novelli, 1641. Pietro Novelli (1603 –1647) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Palermo. Also known as il Monrealese or Pietro “Malta” Novelli to distinguish him from his father, Pietro Antonio Novelli. He was born in Monreale, and died in Palermo. He initially trained with his father, a painter and mosaicist, then in 1618, he moved to Palermo and apprenticed with Vito Carrera (1555–1623). His first dated... Read more

On this day in 1829, the First Provincial Council of Baltimore assembled. It was the first gathering of the American hierarchy in the nation’s history. While the ecclesiastical province of Baltimore comprised the whole territory of the early American Republic, the provincial councils held in that city sufficed for the church government of the country. When, however, several ecclesiastical provinces had been formed, a plenary council became a necessity for the fostering of common discipline. As a consequence, the Fathers... Read more

Bellarmine College was opened on October 3, 1950, under the sponsorship of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville and with the special assistance of the Conventual Franciscan Fathers. In 1950, the year of Bellarmine’s inception, the new school became one of the first in the Commonwealth of Kentucky open to all races. The first forty-two graduating seniors, “The Pioneer Class,” received their diplomas in 1954. In 1968, Bellarmine merged with Ursuline College, a Catholic college for women established by the... Read more

Founded in 1791, St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore is the first Catholic seminary established in the United States. For over two hundred years, St. Mary’s has been owned and operated by the Sulpician Fathers, a community of diocesan priests dedicated to the formation of priests. In 1805, St. Mary’s was chartered as a civil university in Maryland, and in 1822, Pope Pius VII established the seminary the country’s first ecclesiastical (pontifical) faculty with the right to grant degrees... Read more

The occasion for the formation of the Catholic Biblical Association was the outcome of the desire of Bishop Edwin O’Hara, chair of the Episcopal Committee on the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, to improve quality of the New Testament normally used by Catholics by having the Challoner-Rheims New Testament revised. In 1936 O’Hara called a meeting of American Catholic Scripture scholars to help plan and carry out the project. At this meeting a proposal was aired and agreed to for the... Read more

Born Anne-Thérèse Guérin in France, she joined the Sisters of Providence in 1823. For nearly seventeen years she taught in French schools until she responded to a request for sisters from the Bishop of Vincennes, Indiana. In 1841, she and her sisters established St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, the first Catholic liberal arts college for women in the United States. Mother Théodore, from the time of her arrival at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods in 1840 to January 1849, established parish schools at Jasper, St.... Read more

Son of an Irish father and a French mother, Joseph Marmion entered the seminary in Dublin and finished his studies in Rome, where he was ordained in 1881. After several years as a parish priest in Dublin, he joined the Benedictines in 1886 and took the name Columba. He helped found the abbey of Mont César at Leuven, Belgium, where he served as prior, spiritual director, and professor of theology and philosophy. He edited several publications, including Revue Bénédictine. In... Read more