by: Lisa Hamrick, OP
Photo credit: Roman Wersh
On the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, more than 200 people gathered in San Francisco at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption to celebrate and honor the 50th anniversary of the founding of the St. Ignatius Institute (SII) at the University of San Francisco. It was a most appropriate date for this special celebration as it was on this very Solemnity that Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, and John Galten and others set out on pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City to entrust this new academic endeavor under Our Lady’s mantle. Father Fessio and the other founding members of the St. Ignatius Institute saw the great and urgent need at that time for a Classical Great Books program to be incorporated at the university. What made the St. Ignatius Institute curriculum unique was that a USF student could pursue any major at the university while still receiving a Classical Great Books program and could also earn the SII Certificate in addition to their degree.
As Father Fessio said during his homily at the Mass with SII alumnus, Bishop Steven Lopes:
“We drove down to Mexico City, and we arrived there on August 22, which is the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, and we placed that intention at her altar. That was when, after we had come to Our Lady and petitioned her that we decided we are going to establish at the university, a faithfully Catholic liberal arts core program, the St. Ignatius Institute. It was precisely on this day we began the pilgrimage to Our Lady who was the one whose intercession helped us found the institute.”
We were honored by the presence of His Excellency, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who spoke these heartfelt words:
“I come with profound gratitude to the St. Ignatius Institute, especially Father Fessio and John Galten and your visionary founding of this institute. Even all these years later, wherever I go around here in the Bay Area and I meet people who are doing really wonderful, outstanding things for the Church, they all studied at the St. Ignatius Institute! You’ve made a huge contribution to the Church in our area here that will resound for generations to come! I think about the time that the institute was founded. It seemed like a time when all the lights were being switched off in Western Civilization. But there are few people with really keen vision who were turning lights on when others were turning them off — that’s Father Fessio and John Galten.”
John Galten, the former director of the St. Ignatius Institute, spoke these powerful words:
“The institute began in a pilgrimage. It was Our Lady who put her hand on the institute. She willed the institute for the greater honor and glory of her Son. Period! Prayer and pilgrimage and Our Lady and Christian friendship, those became the bedrock and the very skeleton upon which the institute was built. And you are evidence of that! The institute is not dead. You are the institute! And in terms of Vatican Council II, the Church enjoins us to be the light of the world. You are the light of the world. Be the light of the world!”
