On October 14, 1953, Pope Pius
XII presided over the dedication of the new Pontifical North American College
seminary on the Janiculum Hill above Saint Peter’s Basilica. Nearly one hundred
years had passed since the seminary’s founding, and the Pope considered the new
campus’ completion “a stronger flame of hope for the Church in the United
States of America and in the world.” Devotion to the Holy Father, the grace of
priestly ordination, and a solid training in the Church’s teachings were the
three treasures that young men trained at the “NAC” brought back with them to
the United States as priests.
In this follow-up to Father
Robert McNamara’s monumental work, The American College in Rome, 1855–1955,
Monsignor Stephen M. DiGiovanni advances the history of the College over the
next quarter century. The American students in the 1950s were not the same as
those who had lived in the old seminary during the previous century. The world
was very different after numerous revolutions, social upheavals, and two world
wars. Other forces were at work as well, including some changes just beginning
to take place in American society, which would become radically and publicly
manifest on American university and seminary campuses during the next
decades—even in Rome. If prior to the Second Vatican Council everything was
clear and regimented, then during and after the Council less and less was
clear-cut or well-defined on the “Hill of Janus.” In fact, few could have
predicted the aggiornamento or “updating” that was on the horizon that
would profoundly reshape, for better or worse, the NAC and its future priests.