Freshmen Flock to CUA

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Aug. 9 — A record freshman class of more than 860 students from 46 states and 22 countries will attend The Catholic University of America’s campus in Washington, D.C., this fall.

The university will stage a variety of events to inaugurate the new school year.

Following new student orientation Aug.24-27, classes will begin Aug. 28. The Mass of the Holy Spirit will be held Aug. 31 at the Basilica of the National Shrine, following which the university will host a picnic to welcome Washington’s new Archbishop Donald Wuerl as CUA’s chancellor.

Another popular feature of the back-to-school period at CUA returns this year: “room blessings.”

Franciscan friars from the campus ministry office will make the blessings available to students living on campus from Sept. 18-28. According to the university, 75% of eligible students have participated in the ritual in recent years. 

Rights Advocate Dies

WASHINGTON POST, Aug. 5 — Loretta Myrtle Butler, 91, a trail-blazing Catholic African-American scholar and civil-rights advocate, died July 14 in Washington.

The Washington Post detailed some of Butler’s impressive accomplishments. A native of Forest Glen, Md., she graduated from Miner Teacher College and later earned two post-graduate degrees in education from The Catholic University of America.

Her college teaching career included jobs at Paine College in Augusta, Ga., Xavier University in New Orleans and Roosevelt University in Chicago. As well, she volunteered with the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice and the Washington Archdiocese’s Office of Black Catholics, where she helped develop the office’s Black Catholic History Project.

Butler was also instrumental in desegrating Washington-area churches and assisted in the 1961 merger of traditionally black St. Augustine Catholic Church with neighboring St. Paul’s, which had a primarily Irish and German congregation.

Miami’s Emigré University

MIAMI HERALD, Aug. 5 — Miami’s St. Thomas University, which is currently celebrating its 60th anniversary, has an unusual history.

The university — Florida’s only diocesan Catholic university — didn’t start out in the state. Founded as the Universidad de Santo Tomás de Villanueva in Havana in 1946, it relocated to Florida at the invitation of the Archdiocese of Miami after Fidel Castro’s communist regime confiscated the college’s land and expelled its Augustinian founders in 1961.

These days, less dramatic challenges confront the 3,000-student university. Over the next four years, the Miami Herald reported, it plans to reenter the NCAA, relaunch its men’s and women’s basketball teams, add new degrees and open three new buildings.

Business ‘Boot Camp’

BUSINESS WIRE, July 31 — Santa Clara University has inaugurated a new two-week program through which Silicon Valley high-tech executives will pass along their business smarts to people who run for-profit social initiatives.

The two-week camp, which ran this year from July 31 - Aug. 12, gathered 15 “social entrepreneurs” from around the world at the Jesuit university’s Center for Science, Technology and Society.

According to Jim Koch, the center’s executive director, “Silicon Valley has a regional advantage and lots of experience in what it takes to grow rapidly, and there are a variety of approaches that have potential spillover benefit in the social-benefit arena.”