The University of St. Mary of the Lake / Mundelein Seminary is the major seminary and school of theology for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Many of the students will serve as priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago; however, many are studying for 46 other dioceses in the United States and abroad. The University of St. Mary of the Lake had its beginnings as Saint Mary’s College. In 1844, the first bishop of Chicago, the Right Reverend William J. Quarter, D.D. received from the State of Illinois a charter giving the university the power “to confer . . . such academical or honorary degrees as are usually conferred by similar institutions.” Chicago welcomed Saint Mary’s as the first institution of higher education in the city. The University of St. Mary of the Lake flourished until 1866, when financial difficulties forced it to close. In 1921, Archbishop George Mundelein opened a new seminary forty-five miles northwest of the original campus. Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary would operate under the same charter originally granted to the University of St. Mary of the Lake, making it the longest continuous academic charter in the State of Illinois. This third campus was designed by a young Catholic architect by the name of Joseph W. McCarthy. Prior to going into private practice, McCarthy had worked as an apprentice in the office of the great Chicago planner, Daniel Burnham. Cardinal Mundelein instructed McCarthy to design all the seminary buildings in American neo-classical style to symbolize the Catholic Church in America had come of age. The main chapel is modeled after the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Connecticut and the Cardinal’s Villa is a copy of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. In 1926, the new seminary was host to the world, as one of the sites of the International Eucharistic Congress. The campus made transportation history with that event for it required the largest movement of people by rail in the history of the country. In September of 1929, the seminary received a second charter, this time from the Holy See. Cardinal Mundelein obtained from the Sacred Congregation for Seminaries and Universities the authority to grant the international academic degrees of the Holy See. In 1934 the Ecclesiastical Faculty of Theology at Mundelein was honored with a permanent grant of this authority. The seminary became the first American institution to be honored as a pontifical theological faculty under the Apostolic Constitution Deus Scientarium Dominus. Under the leadership of Albert Cardinal Meyer, in 1961 the seminary opened a second campus in Niles, Illinois. The Niles campus became the site for the two-year liberal arts program. The Mundelein campus included the upper class college studies in philosophy followed by a four year theology curriculum. In 1968, under Cardinal Meyer’s successor, John Cardinal Cody, the undergraduate program was affiliated with Loyola University of Chicago and became Niles College of Loyola University. Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary was now strictly a graduate school of theology. The curriculum which resulted from this program revision continued to be implemented for more than a decade. The academic, formation/spiritual and pastoral aspects of the new curriculum were guided by the Program of Priestly Formation of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the directives of the Sacred Congregation of Catholic Education.
