The Catholic University of America history

President Grover Cleveland was in attendance for the laying of the cornerstone of Divinity Hall, now known as Caldwell Hall, on May 24, 1888, as were members of Congress and the United States Cabinet.

On March 7, 1889, the Pope issued the encyclical Magni Nobis, granting the university its charter and establishing its mission as the instruction of Catholicism and human nature together at the graduate level.

History has been taught almost since the founding of The Catholic University of America, with courses on church history offered since 1892.

Bishop and Rector Thomas J. Shahan gave a speech to the Ancient Order of Hibernians in 1894 in which he advocated for Irish independence in language, culture, and politics.

In 1895, Catholic University had three black students, all from DC. "They were simply tested as to their previous education, and this being found satisfactory, no notice whatever was taken of their color.

In 1900, Catholic University was among the 14 institutions offering instruction for the doctorate that formed the Association of American Universities, a group of leading research institutions.

In 1904 the Department of History, established within the School of Philosophy, was first chaired by the Knights of Columbus Chair of American History, Charles Hallan McCarthy.

The National Conference of Catholic Charities—today’s Catholic Charities USA—was founded on the campus of Catholic University in 1910.

In 1913, Pope Pius X gave Shahan his blessing along with $400 (Tweed 49).

Cecil’s best friend Mary and her husband William Montavon, better known to Lottie as Aunt Mayme and Uncle Will, asked Cecil and Walter if they could take Lottie to Lima when Uncle Will was assigned a two-year diplomatic post there in 1916.

“Vast Shrine Is Begun,” The Washington Post, September 24, 1920.

Construction on the crypt level did not actually begin until three years later, in 1923.

“Glories of the Crypt,” The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Salve Regina Press, August 1, 1924). Thomas Joseph Shahan Papers.

Completing her Masters in sociology and social work in 1925, Hilger’s example helped renew the discussion among the Board of Trustees on the topic of female students.

The first laywoman to be registered as a full student was Florence McGuire, who began in 1927 and earned a Masters in Greek and Latin.

In 1928, Rector John H. Ryan granted admission to all religious sisters.² With the stalemate seemingly broken, the Board of Trustees moved quickly to open the University’s graduate programs to all women, lay or religious.

After the university restructured its academic units in 1930, its degrees and enrollment began to appear in the record under particular subject headings for the first time.

In this blogpost, I’ll focus on the early history of the Shrine—from its inception up until the intermission in its construction beginning in 1931.

In 1932, the School of Nursing began to operate on the campus, presenting a new challenge to the University.

The university began admitting Black students again in 1936, following protests from Thomas Wyatt Turner, the Federated Colored Catholics and NAACP (both of which Turner co-founded), and the Catholic Interracial Council.

In 1938, due to the rise of the antisemitic priest Charles Coughlin and not long after Kristallnacht, CUA officials asked CBS and NBC to broadcast an event live from the university campus.

By 1950, one of the final barriers to admission came down with the Board of Trustees officially allowing undergraduate women to enroll in bachelor’s degree programs on campus.

Voight began acting while in high school and earned (1960) a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He moved to New York City and studied (1960–64) under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.

Voight made his Broadway debut in 1961 in the role of Rolf in The Sound of Music.

Voight’s first film appearance was in the title role of the low-budget Fearless Frank (1967), and he had a small part in John Sturges’s Hour of the Gun (1967) before he was cast in the Academy Award winner Midnight Cowboy.

Voight appeared in Mike Nichols’s war comedy Catch-22 and starred as an angry young man in The Revolutionary, both in 1970.

After decades of teaching at the College of St Benedict in Minnesota and serving as a Smithsonian research associate, Hilger passed away in 1977.

Voight received a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the sports broadcaster Howard Cosell in the biopic Ali (2001).

– Pope Saint John Paul II, Message for the 50th Anniversary of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, 16 April 2004

Upon the completion of the IFCA finding aid in 2013, University Archivist and Head of Special Collections W. J. Shepherd explained IFCA’s “deep connections to Catholic University as benefactors”—most notably through the endowment of the St Elizabeth Ann Seton Chair in Education.

In 2015, the Pope celebrated Mass on the East Portico of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in front of a congregation of 30,000 people gathered on the Catholic University Mall.

In 2018 the university experienced some challenges as administrators worked to reduce a $3.5 million deficit.

In 2019 Voight was awarded a National Medal of Arts, cited “for his exceptional capacity as an actor to portray deeply complex characters.”