The American College of the Immaculate Conception

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The American College from the Naamsestraat.

The American College of the Immaculate Conception, or the American College at Louvain, is a Roman Catholic seminary in Leuven, Belgium. The College's current rector is Very Reverend Kevin Codd, a priest of the Diocese of Spokane. It has been announced that Reverend Ross Shecterle of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will succeed Codd as rector on 15 July 2007.^[1]

1 History
2 Location
3 Sponsorship and governorship
4 Mission
5 External links
6 References

[edit] History

The College was founded in 1857 by the bishops of the United States, under the leadership of Bishop Martin J. Spalding of Louisville and Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere of Detroit. Its founding purpose was twofold: to train young European men to serve as missionary priests in North America and to give American seminarians the opportunity to study at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.^[2]

The college remained open through the First World War, preserving some of the books and treasures of Leuven, including the famous medievel statue of the Sedes Sapientiae, through the conflict and the widely-decried burning of Louvain by German troops. During the war, the college took on the roles of emergency hospital and dispensary of food and clothing, at times helping as many as fifteen hundred people per day. The seminary survived the war and continued to operate until 1939, when it was forced to close just before the Second World War. ^[2]

Since its 1952 re-opening, the college has educated and formed hundreds of priests for the Church in the United States. In addition to its primary mission of seminary formation, the American College has in the years since the Second Vatican Council expanded to include a program for priests and religious seeking higher education.

[edit] Location

The American College is located within the city of Leuven in the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussel, and its residents take classes at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, especially its Faculty of Theology, Faculty of Canon Law and Institute of Philosophy.

[edit] Sponsorship and governorship

The seminary is sponsored and overseen by the Catholic bishops of the United States by way of the Committee for the American College of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The chair of that committee is Most Reverend David Laurin Ricken of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne.

[edit] Mission

The primary mission of the American College remains the formation of priests with a missionary spirit. In the years since its founding, the College's alumni have gone forth to serve as many of the priests, professors, and missionaries of the Catholic Church in North America. To this day, the College continues to form and educate young men for the priesthood, primarily for dioceses in the United States. In addition to the classes offered by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the College seminary provides a comprehensive program of human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral formation for seminarians.