Spiritus 150 Years of St. Ignatius MAGIS College Preparatory by Paul Totah ’75 For SI’sSI’s sesquicentennial, this issue of Genesis IV, In the fi rst installment, we learn how SI grew from and the next two, will offer excerpts from a new a one-room schoolhouse in the sand dunes on history of SI, which will be available for sale at the Market Street into one of the leading schools on June 4, 2005, Day on the Boulevard Celebration. the WestWest Coast, despite debt, earthquake and fi re. I. The Founding of the St. Ignatius College (1849–1861) ix years Diocese of Califor- after the nia, in a letter writ- J e s u i t s ten four months after the discovery of gold, arrived in wrote of his diffi culty California, St. Ignatius in ministering to these SCollege appeared on newcomers: Market Street as a “Day by day we see one-room schoolhouse that our circumstances with the mixed grow in diffi culty; that help and resources blessing of Archbishop have shrunk to almost Alemany. What makes nothing; that the the history of SI so hope of supplying the remarkable is that needed clergy is now six years after the almost extinguished; construction of this and, worst of all, that through lack of means small school, SI built and priests, divine an impressive college The fi rst St. Ignatius School and Church, built at Market and 5th Streets in 1855. worship throughout right next door and the whole diocese built an impressive stands upon the brink faculty, as some of the best Jesuit minds Gold Rush Beginnings of total ruin… Oh! How we should fear, of Europe, fl eeing anti-Catholic sentiment dearly Beloved, a chastisement so dread! magine San Francisco before the Gold A chastisement the greatest assuredly in Europe, found their way to teach at Rush: only a few low scrub oaks, only that could befall us from Heaven’s anger, this outpost college on the edge of the a few settlers’ homes, only a ship or which, it would seem, we already begin continent. The school quickly earned the two in the harbor. All that changed within to experience, since God in his inscrutable Imonths after the discovery of gold on respect of the citizens of San Francisco judgments has, for the past few years, January 24, 1848. No one, least of all the who sent their sons to learn from the allowed that in this our country everything Catholic Church, was prepared for the good Italian fathers. These fi rst few years should be thrown into confusion; that the rush of people through the Golden Gate missionaries should die or abandon the also saw SI acquire a staggering debt that on their way to the gold fi elds. Fr. José country, while I have no hope of replacing would cast a cloud over the school until Maria de Jesus Gonzales Rubio, a Francis- them; that religious education should day the middle of the 20th Century. can missionary and administrator of the by day disappear…”1 GENESISGENESIS IV IV History History Supplement Supplement 1 1849 Frs. Accolti & Nobili land in San Francisco … 1 850 Joseph Alemany ordained Bishop of Monterey … 1851 Fr. Nobili starts Santa Clara College … 1853 Accolti goes to Rome to gain support for CA Mission … IN THE AUTUMN 1848, FR. JOHN B. BROUILLET, VICAR- Accolti believed that enough had changed since Roothaan’s general of the diocese of Nesqually, Oregon, landed in San order to warrant the journey, especially with the discovery of Francisco hoping to minister to Catholic miners headed for the gold. “All the white Catholic population around Oregon City gold fields. Fr. Antoine Langlois, a diocesan priest on his way had left for California,” noted SI Archivist Michael Kotlanger, to Canada to join the Society of Jesus, joined him a few months SJ ’64. “The success of the Indian mission work was slow and later. Fr. Brouillet asked him to stay in San Francisco, and he grudging. Greater good seemed to lie in California where the wrote to the Jesuit superior in Oregon for that permission. The Rocky Mountain Mission was forbidden to expand.” Despite answer: “He should labor in San Francisco, and leave the future this prohibition, Accolti petitioned his superior, Fr. Joseph Joset, in God’s hands.”2 SJ, repeatedly for permission to sail to San Francisco; Accolti Later, both Brouillet and Langlois, desperate for finally wore Joset down and permission was granted. 4 help, encouraged Fr. Michael Accolti, SJ (1807– (Accolti, the founder of the California Province 1878), working in Oregon’s Willamette Valley of the Society of Jesus, pursued his dream of (a part of the Jesuits’ Rocky Mountain establishing churches and schools in California Mission) to visit San Francisco, and they with amazing vigor. SI owes its origin as continued their work to minister and much to Accolti as to the school’s founder, convert. In his journal, Langlois notes Fr. Anthony Maraschi, SJ. Without that this work continued “in spite Accolti’s years of campaigning, letter of the natural obstacles thrown writing and personal appeals, the its way by the thirst of gold; gold, Jesuit mission in California might of which all had come in search never have been.) from every part of the globe; in Joset asked Fr. John Nobili, spite, moreover, of the drawbacks SJ, who had met with poor health of uncertain employment, of working at an isolated Indian various inconveniences, of the mission post in British Columbia, intermingling of people, strangers to accompany Accolti to California. to one another, and this in tents On December 3, 1849, the two for a considerable number; in spite boarded the O.C. Raymond, a of the temptations of bar-rooms lumber ship heading down the and saloons on every hand for the Columbia River for California, multitudes that frequented them, to and arrived in San Francisco the amuse themselves, drink and spend night of December 8, on the feast their time…”3 of the Immaculate Conception.5 In Brouillet wrote to Accolti that Fr. Accolti’s memorial on the subject, “the people [of California] desire you warmly and are urging you to come. he writes that “the next day Everybody is asking for a Jesuit College and we were able to set foot here is what they put at the joint disposition of yourselves and the Sisters of Notre Dame: an on the longed-for shores of entire mission, one of the finest and best equipped what goes under the name of in the whole of California, with a magnificent church … on condition that a college and convent be set up there with the San Francisco, but which, whether least possible delay….” Accolti and the Jesuits in the Oregon territory had met with it should be called a villa, a brothel, or challenges working with Native Americans, especially after the Babylon, I am at a loss to determine; inundation of whites into that region. Accolti wanted to work so great in those days was the disorder, the brawling, the open in California, but all the Jesuits were faced with an order by immorality, the reign of crime which brazen-faced triumphed on the Jesuit Father General John Roothaan barring his priests a soil not yet brought under the sway of human laws.” from seeking new mission work there, in part because he did Fr. Accolti initially entertained the idea of heading to the hills not want to see the efforts of the Society stretched too thin and to dig for gold, but gave up that plan. In a letter to Fr. Roothaan because of past prohibitions by the Mexican government against three months after his arrival, he wrote the following: “Here we Jesuits traveling in its territory. Those prohibitions ended with are in California, come not to seek gold in this country of wealth the cession of California from Mexico to the United States on and treasure, but come to do a little good. Though at first there February 2, 1848, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and was thought of sending me with two brothers to the mines to seek means for the support of our missions, on further consideration, Top: Fr. Michael Accolti, SJ, convinced the Society of Jesus to come to it was thought best to abandon such a project, which has its California in 1849. When he arrived (top right), he found a San Fran- dangers, however you look at it. The object of our expedition to cisco as lawless as any Wild West town. Fr. Francis Veyret, SJ (opposite page) was the first person to head a Jesuit school in San Francisco. The this country, according to Father Joset’s instructions, is threefold: College of Sorrows, as it was later known, only lasted several months. 1. To exercise the ministry, especially in assisting the sick, who GENESIS IV History Supplement 1849 Frs. Accolti & Nobili land in San Francisco … 1 850 Joseph Alemany ordained Bishop of Monterey … 1851 Fr. Nobili starts Santa Clara College … 1853 Accolti goes to Rome to gain support for CA Mission … are always numerous in this city; 2. To see if things are favorable as the state capital at the time and because “some property and to the establishment of the Society as the Rev. Mr. Brouillet wrote some money for the putting up of a part of the buildings have us; 3. To make a collection in favor of the missions.”6 been freely offered by the faithful.”9 Accolti also wrote to Fr. Gonzales in Santa Barbara, the The Italian word collegio, it should be noted, had a diocesan administrator, telling him of their different meaning in the 1800s than the arrival.