The Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, colloquially known as Catholic University of Milan or Cattolica, is a private Catholic research university based in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1921. Its satellite campuses are located in Brescia, Piacenza, Cremona and Rome.
The university is organised into 12 faculties and 7 postgraduate schools. Cattolica provides undergraduate courses (bachelor's degree, which corresponds to Italian Laurea Triennale), postgraduate courses (master's degree, which corresponds to Laurea Magistrale, and specializing master) and PhD programs. In addition to these, the university runs several double degree programs with other institutions throughout the world. Degrees are offered both in Italian and in English.
Agostino Gemelli University Hospital serves as the teaching hospital for the medical school of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and owes its name to the university founder, the Franciscan friar, physician and psychologist Agostino Gemelli.
History
The project The embryonic project of a Catholic university began around 1870, guided by representatives of various Catholic cultural currents. In September 1918, when the First World War was ending, Giuseppe Toniolo, before dying, recommended to Father Agostino Gemelli and his staff to found the university, saying: "I will not see the end of the war, but you, when it is finished, do it, found the Università Cattolica".
The foundation and the establishment of faculties
In 1919 Father Agostino Gemelli, Ludovico Necchi, Francesco Olgiati, Armida Barelli, and Ernesto Lombardo founded the Istituto Giuseppe Toniolo di Studi Superiori. On 24 June 1920, the institute was legally recognised with a decree signed by the Minister of Education, Benedetto Croce; at the same time, Pope Benedict XV officially recognised the university's ecclesiastical status.
On 7 December 1921, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore was officially inaugurated with a special Mass celebrated by Father Gemelli in the presence of Achille Ratti, the Cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, who three months later was elected Pope Pius XI. The first campus was in Palazzo del Canonica, at via Sant'Agnese 2. In October 1930, it was moved to the ancient St. Ambrose Monastery, where the main campus remains today. In 1921, 68 students enrolled in the university's 2 available programs, philosophy and social sciences. As of 2016, 14 programs were offered to 30,263 students distributed over the Milan, Brescia, Cremona, Piacenza and Rome campuses.
In 1924, following recognition from the Italian state, which allowed the awarding of legally-recognised degrees, the Humanities and Law Programs were inaugurated. The charter of the Università Cattolica was approved by Royal Decree on 2 October 1924, and published on 31 October on the Gazzetta Ufficiale. In 1923, the Istituto Superiore di Magistero was opened and in 1936 became an independent program, later evolving to become, in 1996, the School of Education Sciences.
In 1926, the economics and politics departments became independent from the School of Law and, in 1931, the autonomous Faculty of Political, Economic and Social Sciences was born, awarding also the university's business degrees until 1947. In 1936, the School of Political Science became independent. The work and efforts of the Università Cattolica continued throughout the post-war period with new campuses and programs opening. The School of Economics officially opened in 1947 with both day and night classes. On 30 October, in the presence of Italian President Luigi Einaudi, the first stone of the Piacenza campus was laid, with the official opening of the School of Agricultural Sciences taking place in November 1952.
On 4 August 1958, the official decree for the opening of a Medical School in Rome, which had been advocated by Father Gemelli, was approved. Enormous difficulties had made this long and complicated, and it was not until the end of the 1950s that the Biological Institutes and the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic were built in Rome. Construction began in 1959; in 1961 Pope John XXIII opened the Medical School, with the first medical doctors graduating in 1967. The school now offers both medical and dentistry programs.
In 1956, the Brescia campus of UCSC was inaugurated with the opening of the School of Teaching and Education. In 1971, at the initiative of important figures in the mathematical field, the School of Mathematics, Physics, and Natural Sciences was opened. During the 1990s, other schools were opened in Milan: the School of Banking, Finance, and Insurance Sciences (1990); the School of Foreign Languages and Literature (today the College of Linguistics) and Foreign Literature (1991); and the School of Psychology (1999). In 1997, in Piacenza, the School of Economics, once part of the Milan curriculum, opened independently, and the School of Law in 1995.
In 2000, thirteen Cultural Centres were opened across Italy. In these centres, through advanced satellite technology, distance-learning courses were activated in collaboration with the major university campuses. During the 2001–2002 academic year, the new School of Sociology, the fourteenth college of the Università Cattolica, was opened in Milan.
In 2012, two new schools were established: the School of Political and Social Science in Milan (from the union of the existing Faculty of Political Science and Sociology) and the School of Economics and Law in Piacenza-Cremona (from the union of the Faculty of Economics and Law Piacenza-Cremona).
World War II During World War II, Ezio Franceschini, who supported the Resistance, organised meetings of the Freedom Volunteer Corps (coordination structure of the partisans) in the university. Towards the end of the war, in 1944, the professor of medieval Latin letters hid, in the basement of Cattolica, a box containing documents and books on the Resistance and FRAMA group founded by Ezio Franceschini. The SS rummaged everywhere in UCSC to find those cards but, buried among the bones of fifty skeletons dead from an epidemic of plague in the sixteenth century, they remained there and emerged only after the war.
The Cattolica was partially destroyed by bombing on 15–16 August 1943, including several classrooms, an administration building, the office building, a cloister by Bramante, an ancient staircase, the hall of honour, and some colleges. The reconstruction work began immediately, moved by the words of Agostino Gemelli "rise again more beautiful and bigger than before".
Protests of 1968
After the university increased tuition fees on 15 November 1968, protests began at UCSC, Milan, and spread throughout Italy. Students who occupied the university were expelled by the rector Ezio Franceschini with the help of the police led by Commissioner Luigi Calabresi. Three days later, 30,000 students marched through Milan to the archbishop's residence, and the protest spread to every major university in the country. On 21 March, the Cattolica was reoccupied by the police, after being evacuated and closed indefinitely. A few days later, on 25 March, there was the so-called "battle of Largo Gemelli", where thousands of students tried to reopen the university but were strongly repelled by the police. The leader of the protest was Mario Capanna, a student of philosophy at the Università Cattolica.
The Italian cabinet of 2011 In November 2011, the Prime Minister Mario Monti appointed three professors as ministers. The rector Lorenzo Ornaghi was appointed minister for heritage and cultural activities; Renato Balduzzi, professor of constitutional law, was appointed minister of health; and Dino Piero Giarda, professor of public economics at the faculty of economics, became minister for relations with Parliament.
After the appointment of Professor Lorenzo Ornaghi as a minister, all the powers and functions belonging to the office of rector were entrusted to the vice-chancellor, Prof. Franco Anelli, for the term of Ornaghi's office.
Rector
The Magnifico Rettore is the most senior post in this institution, elected every 4 years by the board of directors. The role of the Rector is to represent the university and to convene and chair the board of directors, the management committee, the academic senate, and the board of the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital.
Organization
Schools
The UCSC offers a wide range of degrees in 12 faculties. Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences (1951) ‒ Piacenza-Cremona Faculty of Arts and Philosophy (1924) ‒ Milan, Brescia Faculty of Banking, Finance and Insurance Sciences (1990) ‒ Milan Faculty of Economics (1947) ‒ Milan, Rome Faculty of Economics and Law (2000) ‒ Piacenza-Cremona Faculty of Educational Sciences (1936) ‒ Milan, Brescia, Piacenza Faculty of Law (1924) ‒ Milan Faculty of Linguistic Sciences and Foreign Literatures (1991) ‒ Milan, Brescia Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Natural Sciences (1968) ‒ Brescia Faculty of Medicine and Surgery (1958) ‒ Rome Faculty of Political and Social Sciences (1931) ‒ Milan, Brescia Faculty of Psychology (1999) ‒ Milan, Brescia
Postgraduate Schools Postgraduate Schools (Alte Scuole) are centres of excellence in research and teaching. ALMED - Postgraduate School of Media Communications and Performing Arts (2002) ‒ Milan ALTIS - Postgraduate School Business & Society (2005) ‒ Milan ASA - Postgraduate School of Environmental Studies (2008) ‒ Brescia ASAG - Postgraduate School of Psychology Agostino Gemelli (2001) ‒ Milan ASERI - Postgraduate School of Economics and International Relations (1995) ‒ Milan ALTEMS - Postgraduate School of Health Economics and Management (2009) ‒ Rome SMEA - Postgraduate School of Agricultural and Food Economics (1984) ‒ Cremona
Campuses
Milan campus
Cattolica has campuses in six Italian cities, with its seat in the historic Cistercian monastery near the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in the heart of Milan. Originally a monastery built by Benedictine monks in the 8th century, the UCSC Milan campus expanded under the care of Cistercian friars in the 15th century and from military and social developments both during the Napoleonic era and World War II.
The restructuring of the Benedictine monastery by Giovanni Muzio in collaboration with the engineer Pier Fausto Barelli began in 1929 and finished twenty years later.
The campus, nestled within the original city walls of Milan, features a façade by Giovanni Muzio, the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, the atrium of the zodiac, and the Great Hall (Aula Magna).
The main section of Gemelli consists of the following buildings: monumental with cloister by Bramante, offices, Gregorianum, Antonianum, Via Lanzone 18, Ambrosianum, Franciscanum, and Domenicanum.
Most of the buildings, colleges, and campus facilities are located in St. Ambrose district, within the city centre of Milan. The seat in Via Necchi 5/9 was the historic seat of the Augustinianum College, containing, in addition to classrooms and offices, the economic institutes, the department of economics and the department of linguistics, library, science, economics, mathematics and statistics, catering services for staff and students, and the Domus restaurant. The seat in Via Carducci 28/30 is located in the Palazzo Gonzaga and was built by Arpesani in a Lombard style, incorporating the existing cloister of St. Jerome. Here is the main office and the office of international relations. The historical site of St. Agnese Catholic is on route 2, consisting of the Palazzo del Canonica. ALMED is located in this building.
Satellite campuses