A new Catholic research university promises to form the next generation of saints, scholars and scientists by embracing the relationship between faith and science.
“The Church has contributed an enormous number of scientists to the development of both ancient and modern science,” Bishop Arthur L. Kennedy, president of the Catholic Institute of Technology (CatholicTech), told Our Sunday Visitor. “What we’re doing is something new, but in fact, it’s also something very old.”
While based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the campus of the American university is located in Castel Gandolfo, Italy — roughly an hour’s drive from the heart of Rome and Vatican City. This fall, the inaugural class of 15 students will arrive and choose between bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, biomedical engineering and biology.
The university calls itself the “first-ever Catholic institution built exclusively for research advancements in the fields of the sciences, engineering, technology, and mathematics” and says it challenges the misconception that the Catholic faith is incompatible with scientific exploration.
Its mission is to “integrate the wisdom of revelation with the truths that are discoverable to human reason” with a vision to foster “a community of Catholic scientists and engineers who boldly engage with rapid advancements in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] while upholding the timeless truths of the Catholic Tradition.”
A distinct curriculum
The university promises students hands-on problem solving, real-world engineering projects and research to prepare them for industry, graduate school or even medical school. The curriculum consists of foundational math and science courses, humanities courses and specialized courses.
In addition to their major, every student will graduate with minors in philosophy and theology after taking classes that explore questions like “What ethical considerations should guide the development of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and gene editing?”
Looking to the future, CatholicTech hopes to expand. By 2028, the university plans to launch its first masters and doctoral programs. In the next 15 years, CatholicTech hopes to receive an R1 status — a status granted to schools with a high dedication to research.
There are only three other Catholic R1 institutions in the United States, according to CatholicTech: Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana.
The faculty will use research methods with special focuses: design of new materials and molecules, artificial intelligence (AI) applications in education, large language models and applications to Catholic philosophy and theology, machine learning, computer human interaction, astrophysics and augmented reality.
CatholicTech is also seeking regional accreditation through the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) and program accreditation through ABET.
A one-of-kind Catholic university
Husband-and-wife team William and Alexis Haughey began CatholicTech, Bishop Kennedy said. William, a seasoned entrepreneur, and Alexis, a PhD student at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wanted a university that not only offered engineering programs engaged with research but also served students with a lively Catholic faith, he said.
The university features faculty and staff from other well-known higher education institutions, including Stanford University in Stanford, California, and MIT, he said.
For his part, Bishop Kennedy, former auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Boston, brings prior experience to CatholicTech, including his role in the creation of the Catholic Studies program at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.
“We have this wonderful group of people who are engaged with interest in the development and committed to interrelate Catholic faith with the sciences,” he said of CatholicTech.
He also revealed a past connection with the university’s building, once owned by the Pontifical North American College, a seminary in Rome.
“When I was a student over there, I lived in this building for three summers,” he remembered. “To return to it is going to be a strange privilege.
A special location
Castel Gandolfo, the city that houses CatholicTech’s campus, is considered the center of Catholic science, according to CatholicTech. The city also holds the Vatican Observatory, one of the oldest active astronomical observatories in the world, which will partner with CatholicTech.
“CatholicTech students will have the unique opportunity to take courses and conduct research in the fields of Planetary Sciences and Astrophysics with the leading Catholic scholars in the world,” according to CatholicTech. “This collaboration is not just academic, but based on our shared mission to educate the faithful on the intersections of faith and science.”
A focus on faith
CatholicTech promises to embrace its Catholic identity. Among other things, it will offer daily Mass for students at a time when no classes are taking place. Students can spend time in adoration three times a week and go to confession regularly.
Students can also join a daily Rosary, lauds and vespers, weekly men’s and women’s prayer groups, monthly Church history immersion trips around Rome and Italy, annual spiritual retreats and group pilgrimage opportunities throughout Europe and the Holy Land.
“It will be a full Catholic way of living,” Bishop Kennedy described.
A student introduction
Students will be arriving from across the United States, including incoming freshmen Kyle Brown and Joseph Shores from Charleston, South Carolina, and Maria Isabel Pastrana-O’Connor from San Antonio, Texas.
“At first, it was a bit of a leap for me to go to college that far away from home, but I was so happy and excited when I got accepted!” Pastrana-O’Connor, who will be studying mechanical engineering, said in an interview CatholicTech shared with Our Sunday Visitor.
Brown and Shores, best friends whose most recent project was working on an autonomous drone engineering team, shared their excitement in another interview shared with Our Sunday Visitor.
“I choose CatholicTech because of the connection between the staff and students with Catholicism,” Brown said. “Going to CatholicTech, my personal goal is starting a Catholic engineering start-up.”
Shores expressed interest in AI, specifically large-language models.
“At first, it was a bit of a leap for me to go to college that far away from home, but I was so happy and excited when I got accepted!”
Pastrana-O’Connor
“With CatholicTech, we will know the technology, the ethics, and where it is going, and will be able to integrate that Catholic ethical view into the mainstream,” he said.
A look at student formation
CatholicTech comes at a time when the Church is dealing with questions regarding living in the world more and more from the side of anthropology, Bishop Kennedy said.
“What is the human being? And how is the human being constructed in the image and likeness of God through both his or her intelligence and also virtue and the achievement of the good — personal good, the good of society and the good of order?” he said.
“With CatholicTech, we will know the technology, the ethics, and where it is going, and will be able to integrate that Catholic ethical view into the mainstream.”
Joseph Shores
By linking humanities with engineering, he hoped that students would come away seeing “everything they do through their faith.”
“An understanding [of] the dignity of the human person — that must always be protected in the face of whatever technology we’re thinking about,” he said he hopes students take away. “That will be the central thing.”
