Founding Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, established a School of Grammar, Humanities, and Christian Doctrine (''Scuola di grammatica, d'umanità e di Dottrina cristiana'') in Rome on 18 February 1551. It was located in a building at the base of the
Capitoline Hill, on what is today the
Piazza d'Aracoeli.
Francis Borgia, the viceroy of Catalonia and a Catholic patron, provided financial support for the new school. With a small library connected to it, the school was called the Roman College (
Collegio Romano). In September 1551, due to its increased enrollment, the college moved to a larger facility behind the
Santo Stefano del Cacco Church in Rome. After only two years of operation, the Roman College had 250 graduates.
Early growth In January 1556,
Pope Paul IV authorized the Roman College to confer academic degrees in theology and philosophy, elevating it to the rank of a university. During the following 20 years, ever increasing enrollment forced the college to twice move to larger facilities. During this period, the college added chairs in
moral philosophy and Arabic to the existing chairs in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew. When the college reached an enrollment of 1000 students,
Pope Gregory XIII decided to build it a more expansive facility. He expropriated two city blocks in Rome near the
Via del Corso and commissioned the architect
Bartolomeo Ammannati to design a new building. The new college building was inaugurated in 1584 in what became known as the Piazza Collegio Romano, across from the
Palazzo Doria Pamphilj. In gratitude for Gregory XIII's sponsorship, the college administration lauded him as its "founder and father" and renamed the Roman College as the Gregorian University. The new space at Piazza Collegio Romano allowed the Gregorian University to add chairs of church history and
liturgy. The Gregorian soon became known for its work in mathematics, physics and astronomy.
Christopher Clavius, then a professor at the Gregorian, developed the
Gregorian calendar that is still used worldwide today. The Jesuit mathematician
Athanasius Kircher also later taught at the Gregorian. Not long after its Piazza Collegio Romano site opened, the Gregorian had around 2,000 students. Due to the limited size of its chapel, the Gregorian started rebuilding it in 1626 as the
Church of Sant'Ignazio. Completed in 1650, the church is considered one of the major
Baroque churches in the Rome area.
Modern era In 1773, following the
suppression of the Society of Jesus throughout Europe, the Jesuits were forced to cede control over the Gregorian University to the Diocese of Rome. But
Pope Leo XII returned the Gregorian to Jesuit control on 17 May 1824 after the reestablishment of the Society of Jesus (the Diocese of Rome then founded the "Pontifical Athenaeum of the Roman Seminary", the current
Pontifical Lateran University). With the
Capture of Rome in 1870, Rome and the
Papal States were incorporated into the new
Kingdom of Italy. The new government of Italy then confiscated the Gregorian property and building, converting it into the
Ennio Quirino Visconti Liceo Ginnasio. The Gregorian was forced to move into a much smaller facility at the
Palazzo Gabrielli-Borromeo on Via del Seminario in Rome. Due to its lack of space, the Gregorian was forced to drop all of its faculties except for theology and philosophy. Enrollment dropped to under 250 students by 1875.
Pope Pius IX later granted the Gregorian the title "Pontifical University". In 1876, the faculty of
canon law was transferred from the
University of Rome La Sapienza to the Gregorian, and the university gradually resumed the teaching of other disciplines. After World War I,
Pope Benedict XV and his successor,
Pope Pius XI, worked to create a new campus for the Gregorian at the base of
Quirinal Hill, adjacent to the
Pontifical Biblical Institute (
Biblicum). Pius XI laid the first stone for the new campus on 27 December 1924. Designed by architect
Giulio Barluzzi in
Neoclassical style, it was completed by 1930. After moving to the new campus, the Gregorian continued to expand to new faculties and disciplines as well as to add new buildings. The Pontifical Institute Regina Mundi, dedicated to the theological formation of women, opened in 1955 and closed in 2005.
Current era Today the Gregorian University has some 2750 students from over 150 countries. About 70% of the students are foreign nationals, with Most students are priests, seminarians, and members of religious orders. After the
Second Vatican Council, the first women to earn doctoral degrees at the university were
Sandra Schneiders IHM and Mary Milligan
RSHM. Both graduates became authorities in
New Testament theology and Christian spirituality. The new statutes of the Pontifical Gregorian University with the incorporation of the two pontifical institutes were ratified and approved by the
Dicastery for Culture and Education on 11 February 2024, and came into force on 19 May 2024. Michael Dougherty, a plagiarism expert of
Ohio Dominican University, accused the university of "systematic failure to maintain academic integrity at the doctoral level at the Gregorian University in specific disciplines during a relatively recent period." His 2024 book focused on violations of academic integrity at the university from 1995 to 2014, arguing that nine dissertations were severely deficient. Among the works Dougherty analyzes were dissertations submitted by the bishops
Paul Kariuki Njiru,
Fintan Gavin, and
Stephen Robson. Earlier accounts of plagiarism in published doctoral dissertations were documented in review articles in
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly and
Analecta Cisterciensia. The university commissioned a special three-member panel, which concluded that Robson's dissertation did not contain plagiarized material, clearing him. ==Academics==