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College of the Holy Cross

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College of the Holy Cross

The College of the Holy Cross is a private Jesuit liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. It was founded by educators Benedict Joseph Fenwick and Thomas F. Mulledy in 1843 under the auspices of the Society of Jesus. Holy Cross was the first Catholic college in New England and is among the oldest Catholic institutions of higher education in the US.

Holy Cross is a four-year residential undergraduate institution with approximately 3,000 students. Students choose from 64 academic programs, including interdisciplinary and self-designed majors in liberal arts disciplines. The college's 174-acre (70-hectare) campus is situated on a hill overlooking the Blackstone River and Worcester. It has one of the largest financial endowments of any liberal arts college in the United States, and is one of the academically competitive Hidden Ivies. In 1986, Holy Cross joined the Patriot League, where its athletic teams compete as the Crusaders in NCAA Division I.

Notable graduates of Holy Cross include recipients of Emmy, Grammy, Academy, and Tony awards; 5 Rhodes Scholars, 5 Marshall Scholars, 6 Truman Scholars, Goldwater Scholars and Watson Fellows; Pulitzer Prize winners, a Nobel Prize laureate, U.S. Senators, and Olympic athletes. Other notable alumni include Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. The college is a top producer of Fulbright scholars, having graduated 182 grantees.

The College of the Holy Cross was founded by Benedict Joseph Fenwick, second Bishop of Boston, as the first Catholic college in New England. Its establishment followed Fenwick's efforts to create a Catholic college in Boston which had been thwarted by the city's Protestant civic leaders. From the beginning of his tenure as bishop, Fenwick intended to establish a Catholic college within the boundaries of his diocese; a new influx of immigrants after 1830, consisting mostly of Catholic Irish Americans, prompted the need for a Jesuit educational institution. He considered Benedicta, Maine, as a location, but abandoned the idea. He petitioned the Society of Jesus to seek their approval in establishing an institution in Worcester, and they sent Thomas F. Mulledy to prepare a report regarding Fenwick's proposal. Mulledy's favorable report secured the Society's approval in August 1843.

Relations with Boston's civic leaders worsened such that, when a Jesuit faculty was finally secured in 1843, Fenwick decided to leave the Boston school and instead opened the College of the Holy Cross 45 miles (72 km) west of the city in central Massachusetts, where he felt the Jesuits could operate with greater autonomy. The bishop's letters record his enthusiasm for the project as well as for its location:

Next May I shall lay the foundation of a splendid College in Worcester ... It is calculated to contain 100 boys and I shall take them for $125 per an. & supply them with everything but clothes. Will not this be a bold undertaking? Nevertheless I will try it. It will stand on a beautiful eminence & will command the view of the whole town of Worcester.

The site of the college, Mount Saint James, was originally occupied by a Catholic boarding school run by James Fitton, with his lay collaborator Joseph Brigden. On February 2, 1843, Fitton sold the land to Fenwick and the Diocese of Boston to be used to found the Catholic college that the bishop had wanted in Boston. Fenwick gave the college the name of his cathedral church, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

The school opened in October 1843 with Jesuit Thomas F. Mulledy, former president of Georgetown University, as its first president, and on the second day of November, with six students aged 9 to 19, the first classes were held. Within three years, the enrollment had increased to 100 students. Initially the education was more at the elementary and high school level; later it became a higher level institution.

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