One first edition at John Carroll University's Graselli library is significant because it was written by the school's namesake, John Carroll, a Jesuit before the Society was suppressed in 1773 and the first Catholic archbishop in the country. Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America, published in 1784 in Annapolis, was the first book published in the States by an American Catholic. It was also the first Catholic-American work of controversial nature as it refuted arguments made against transubstantiation and Church infallibility in a contemporary book published in Philadelphia.
New Provincial |
New Presidents | |
 Fr. Thomas Smolich, SJ, has been named the California Province's new provincial. Smolich, who has an MBA from Stanford, has served as project manager at Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition, an affordable-housing developer in San Francisco, and as assistant for planning and programs in the province. He has written two articles about business for Company. |  Fr. Robert Lawton, SJ, has been named president of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Lawton served as dean and assistant professor of theology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and assistant professor of Hebrew at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. |  Fr. Edward Glynn, SJ, has been appointed the 23d president of John Carroll University in Cleveland. Glynn, former president of St. Peter's College in Jersey City and Gonzaga University in Spokane and provincial of the Maryland Province, has served as John Carroll's acting president for the last year. |
St. Thomas College in Moscow, founded in 1991 shortly after the demise of the USSR, is one of the few Catholic theological schools in Russia, filling a religious void in a country that for decades was dominated by communism. Jesuits began working at the school in 1992 and assumed its administration and operation in 1997. This ecumenical institution, with Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant students and faculty, has branches in St. Petersburg, Kiev, and other cities. Its Moscow campus, which had to move five times since '91, will be permanently housed in this building on Friedrich Engels Street. Purchased by the Society of Jesus, it is being renovated and will open this September. It will also host a Russian Orthodox institution, St. Andrew's Biblical and Theological College.
For the past fourteen years, on the first Saturday in May, economically disadvantaged youth from all over the Bay Area gather at the University of San Francisco for the "Spring Day of Play." Since many of these kids come from neighborhoods that lack safe places to play, this day offers them the chance to have free rein of USF's huge soccer field, where they can fly kites, play games, get their faces painted, and see magic shows.
The day, brainchild of Sr. Marie Ignatius Clune, director of the university's Outreach Ministry, is meant to be a celebration of life, youth, and the 700-plus USF students who have participated in service projects throughout the school year. Most of the children who are invited already know USF students through tutoring and mentoring programs.
This spring, students at Gonzaga University in Spokane once again saddled up for the annual Aprilfest Rodeo, a tradition for the past seventeen years. This amateur competition includes goat-tying, bull and bareback riding, pig chasing, barrel racing, and the two-person, three-barrel flag race. Since most Gonzaga students are not experienced cowhands, those who wish to take part in the rodeo must first participate in practice sessions.
In the tradition of ancient astronomers, students at Loyola University Chicago's Rome Center (pictured) and the University of British Columbia recreated a method of measuring the earth's circumference first attempted around 200 b.c. by the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes. Students in Rome and in Vancouver simultaneously measured the altitude of the sun from their two locations.
Unlike the original experiment, which used sticks and deep wells as measuring devices, the students used calibrated sheets of transparent paper. Eratosthenes's measurements indicated that the earth's circumference was 40,000 kilometers, while the students in Rome and Vancouver derived a value of 40,150 km, both very close to modern determinations of 40,074 km.