This neighborhood is where my dad grew up. I have always enjoyed ‘mini’ retreat days in this area of town.
Enjoy the article!
Catholic culture gives Washington neighborhood ‘Little Rome’ identity
By Andrea Slivka
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Catholics don’t have to go to Italy to visit Rome.Tucked away in a little section of Washington, the Brookland neighborhood around The Catholic University of America is known as “Little Rome” and “Little Vatican,” according to local legend and District of Columbia guidebooks.
Just as the center of the Vatican is St. Peter’s, the center of Little Rome is Catholic University, founded by the U.S. bishops in 1887 to be the national Catholic university.
Many other Catholic institutions later moved into the area around the university, creating a distinctively Catholic culture in which it’s not uncommon to see a colorful variety of religious habits in a single day.
About 20 religious communities for men and women, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are all located near the university.
Father George McLean, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, has lived in the Brookland neighborhood since 1956 and remembers when the area had an even higher concentration of Catholic culture and communities.In the 1950s, the area had at least 50 men’s and women’s religious communities, about a dozen schools of theology for particular men’s religious orders and 70 houses for graduate students of the various orders, he said.
The high concentration of religious communities wasn’t a coincidence.
“They were actively invited by the cardinal,” Father McLean said in an interview with Catholic News Services.He was referring to Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, who encouraged the religious communities, including the Oblates, to buy property near the university in the early part of the 20th century to help support the university while it was having financial troubles. At that time the area was part of the Baltimore Archdiocese. Washington was established as an archdiocese by Pope Pius XII in 1939.
In the late 1960s, there was another increase in the number of religious in the Brookland area when the Second Vatican Council opened the door for more religious women to attend college.
Father McLean remembers seeing signs posted by the university’s campus mail services asking sisters to please use their last names while on campus because the university didn’t know which mail to give to each of the 20 Sister Ann Jeans.
In the 1950s and ’60s, he also remembers that departments, such as psychology, sought to incorporate Catholic teaching into the curriculum and that the university also provided a forum for discussing changes in the church during Vatican II.
“The university was truly a Catholic intellectual center and that was the heart of Little Rome,” said Father McLean, who taught metaphysics at the university.
As the secular and Catholic culture nationwide continued to change in the latter part of the century, the academic approach of the university became more mainstream and the number of religious in the area and at the university began to decline.
About 20 religious communities and a small number of theological schools still remain in the neighborhood.
The university continues to be the national Catholic university. The archbishop of Washington always serves as its chancellor and representative to the Vatican.
In addition to the university, the adjacent Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is another focal point of Little Rome. About 750,000 Catholics visit the shrine each year, according to Jacqueline Hayes, director of communications.
The original plans for the national shrine began when The Catholic University of America’s administration wanted to build a large chapel to serve the needs of the growing number of faculty and staff in the early 20th century, writes author Gregory Tucker in his book, “America’s Church: The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.”
The plans for the chapel eventually turned into plans for a shrine to Mary, honoring her as patroness of the United States under the title of the Immaculate Conception, a distinction given to her by the U.S. bishops in 1846 and ratified by Pope Pius IX the following year.
The national shrine, opened in 1959, is one of the 10 largest churches in the world and contains more than 70 chapels and oratories that are mostly dedicated to titles of Mary. The titles reflect the ethnic and devotional traditions of the American and universal church. Pope John Paul II named the shrine a basilica in 1990.
Across the street from the national shrine in Little Rome is the Dominican House of Studies — a formation house for members of the Dominican order that also provides theological pontifical degrees for laypeople.
The Dominican House welcomes visitors to join the priests and brothers for Masses and praying the Liturgy of the Hours. During the school year, the liturgies and prayers are done in the main chapel, which is designed in the style of a European monastary chapel and the Liturgy of the Hours is chanted in alternated choir form.
Not far from the Dominican House is the headquarters of the USCCB, which is both the membership organization to which all the bishops belong and their public policy arm. It is made up of a variety of secretariats and offices with staff who carry out the work of the bishops’ various committees.
Other Catholic institutions of note in the area are the headquarters of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, Trinity University, Providence Hospital and the Franciscan Monastery and Commissariat of the Holy Land.