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Pontifical College Josephinum

The Pontifical College Josephinum is a Catholic seminary and private college in Columbus, Ohio. Dennis and I were welcomed by Tracy Brockman, the Director of Information Technology, who met us at the front desk. She gave us wonderful tour of the Josophinum campus and a brief history. It turns out that two of my seminary classmates, Bishop Earl Boyea, and Msgr. Paul Langsfeld, were both past rectors of the Josephinum.
The Josephinum was found by Joseph Jessing in 1888 to prepare seminarians for the many German-speaking communities in the United States at that time. The college was granted the status of a Pontifical College in 1892 by Pope Leo XIII, making it the only pontifical seminary in North America.
Joseph Jessing emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1867, was ordained a priest in 1870, and assigned to Sacred Heart Church in Pomeroy, Ohio (for some pictures and history of Pomeroy, Meigs County, and Fr. Jessing, click HERE and HERE .) Fr. Jessing started the St. Joseph Orphanage in the parish, and this grew so rapidly that he moved it to Columbus. This eventually grew into an educational institution that would later become a seminary, The Josephinum. Fr. Jessing lived to see the first six seminarians ordained to the priesthood in June 1889, and he died less than six months later.
The house cassock of the Josephinum was identical to the house cassock of the Collegio Urbano in Rome because both were established under the Propaganda Fide.

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