The Pontifical Gregorian University is a Roman Catholic university in Rome. One of the oldest in the world, the university celebrated its 450th anniversary in 2001. It currently hosts students from a variety of countries, cultures, and vocations in the Roman Catholic Church. It has one of the largest theology departments in the world, with over 1600 student-priests, seminarians, religious, and laymen and women from over 130 countries. Many of the Gregorian's professors are Jesuit priests, but increasingly other orders are represented in the faculty, as is the laity.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and St. Francis Borgia originally founded the university in 1551 as the Roman College for the goal of training priests to be missionaries for the Society of Jesus. Just three decades after the original foundation of the College, account taken of the huge increase in registration and importance, Pope Gregory XIII transferred the institution from a location adjacent the Victor Emmanuel II monument to a site that includes the church of Saint Ignatius across from the Palazzo Doria Pamphilij. Gregory XIII's palazzo still remains today, functioning now as a high school, and it is after him that the College takes its name. Three hundred years later, in 1873, Pope Pius IX again relocated the College and conferred upon it and its subsequent Rectors their present-day titles.

From 1924 to 1929 construction on the present-day site was performed. The Gregorian has retained its imposing presence in the Piazza della Pilotta, sharing that square with the associated Pontifical Biblical and Pontifical Oriental Institutes as well as the Casa Santa Maria, which is the graduate house of the Pontifical North American College.

Extraterritoriality is enjoyed by the University according to the Lateran Treaties of 1929 between the Holy See and Italy. As such, it is a part of the Vatican, and inviolable during wartime. Its degrees are awarded on the authority of the Pope, not the Jesuits, who nonetheless guarantee the quality of the University's course curricula.

Among the Gregorian's illustrious students are 14 popes, including Pope Pius XII, Pope Paul VI, and Pope John Paul I, as well as 20 saints and 39 beatified, including Saint Robert Bellarmine, Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, and Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Roger Boscovich. The vast majority of the Church's leading experts and members of the College of Cardinals hail from the Gregorian.

External link

• The Pontifical Gregorian University Official Site (in Italian)

Properties of the Holy See | Roman Catholic Church in Italy | Jesuit education | Pontifical Universities | Roman Catholic universities and colleges in Europe

Päpstliche Universität Gregoriana | Université pontificale grégorienne | Pontificia Università Gregoriana | האוניברסיטה האפיפיורית הגרגוריאנית | Pontificale Gregoriaanse Universiteit | グレゴリアン大学 | Gregoriana | Papieski Uniwersytet Gregoriański | Pontifícia Universidade Gregoriana | Gregoriana