2013, St Isidore's Irish College, Rome - Part 1/2 Saint Isidore's College is part of the Irish Franciscan Province of the Order of Friars Minor.The College today is on lease to the Minister General of the Order, who has transferred to St. Isidores what was the entire community and activity of St. Bonaventure's College, Grottaferrata ( Rome ). It has been agreed to retain an Irish Franciscan presence, if at all possible. The new community took up residence in early November 2008, and now numbers fourteen friars from eight different countries - Italy, Ireland, Germany, Poland, South Africa/USA, Switzerland and Madagascar. The main work of the community is research and publication, and the maintenance of two important research libraries. The history of St.Isidore's College begins with Friar Luke Wadding. Born in Waterford in 1588, Luke Wadding was obliged to go abroad to get a proper Catholic education because of religious persecution in Ireland. He entered the Franciscan Order in Lisbon. One of his main ideas from the start was to vindicate the Order against those accusing the Franciscans and their founder of being opposed to learning. He acquired such fame as a theologian that he was chosen by the King of Spain as theological adviser to a delegation sent to Rome to petition Pope Paul V for the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On arriving in Rome in 1618, he found that little was known there about Ireland, and the hard conditions being suffered by the Irish people. Moreover, owing to the activity of hostile people, the Irish in Rome were ignored, and often disparaged. Wadding gradually succeeded in changing all of this. Because of his love of simplicity, he was allowed to live not at the magnificent Spanish Embassy but at the small Franciscan convent of San Pietro in Montorio. At S. Pietro in Montorio, the Irish chieftains Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone (+1616), his son Hugh, Baron of Dungannon (+1609) and O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell (+1608) had lived and died. They had been compelled to escape from Ireland after leading a military resistance, without success, against the forces of Elizabeth I of England. The earls had been honourably received by Paul V in Rome. The Franciscan Minister General asked Wadding to take responsibility for a small unfinished Church and convent in Rome dedicated to the recently canonised Spanish farmer-saint and patron of agriculture, St Isidore of Madrid. The building was saddled with debts, but Wadding agreed. He was granted a free hand to set up a house of studies there for Irish Franciscans. With the help of benefactors - they included all the reigning pontiffs of the period besides many cardinals, princes and ambassadors - he remodelled and added to the existing edifice, and finished the Church. In this way St. Isidore's of the Irish Franciscans came into being and was recognised as a house of recollection and studies under Wadding's rectorship in a Bull of Pope Urban VIII in 1625. St Isidore was kept as patron, St Patrick as co-patron. From the beginning Wadding was committed to studies, and he initiated the large Library in St.Isidore's, with its patrimony of valuable manuscripts and books dating back to 1400 and earlier. Since then - except for two short periods during the Napoleonic occupation, and then only partially - St Isidore's has never passed out of Irish hands. During the Napoleonic years, the Guardian, James MacCormack, saved the library and archives. Luke Wadding was rector of St.Isidore's for thirty years. During this time, in addition to founding the Irish College for secular clergy in Rome, he played a great part in the counter-reform that had been begun by the Council of Trent and put into practice by Pope St.Pius V. Wadding's fame as a writer largely rests on his edition of the works of Duns Scotus, the medieval Oxford philosopher and defender of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, defined as a dogma of faith in 1854 by Pius IX. But his greatest literary achievement was the Annales Ordinis Minorum, a history of the Franciscan Order from its foundation. Wadding died before finishing the work which was continued by others. He did much for the Irish cause in Rome. And it was largely due to his influence that the Feast of St.Patrick was put on the Church's universal Liturgical Calendar. Wadding also published a complete annotated edition of the Writings of St.Francis of Assisi. This is a pioneer work constantly quoted by scholars and students of Franciscan history and spirituality. (Continued in Part 2)

• published: 21 Nov 2013
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