Franciscan University launches new hub in Washington, DC, after multimillion-dollar gift

Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, chapel and statue. / Credit: Joseph Antoniello, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Sep 10, 2024 / 14:05 pm (CNA).

Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio is set to launch a Washington, D.C., program for its students, including residential and learning facilities, the university announced last week.  

The Ward and Kathy Fitzgerald Franciscan University Homeland Mission (FUHM) is part of the university’s new “Encounter” initiative, designed to extend Franciscan University’s mission and impact beyond its campus in Steubenville, Ohio. It is designed to equip students for “advancing the great global missionary cause of positively impacting the principles and policies guiding the United States government.”

The university has purchased a $3 million property on Massachusetts Avenue in the District of Columbia for the program thanks to a $10 million gift from Ward and Kathy Fitzgerald. Their donation helps fund the Outreach and Evangelization component of the university’s ongoing $110 million Rebuild My Church Capital Campaign. 

“The Franciscan charism of ongoing conversion, which invites everyone to continually and humbly draw closer to Christ, will be key to carrying out this mission,” said university president Father Dave Pivonka, TOR, in a Sept. 3 press release. 

“The Franciscan University Homeland Mission will invite others to deeper conversion through three pillars grounded in the university’s mission: Evangelization and Joyful Presence, Intellectual and Personal Formation, and Support for Human Dignity,” Pivonka said.

FUHM’s operation will be headed by Stephen Catanzarite, executive director of Encounter, along with the political science department and other Franciscan departments and partners. 

The program is intended to bring Gospel values as well as Catholic social teaching “to bear on the political and social atmosphere of Washington, D.C.,” the press release said. “This engagement will not only bring the Church’s witness to the legislative and political process, but it will also serve to draw more people to Christ and his Church.”

“Programs and events at the FUHM will challenge students to work and witness ongoing, systematic change in federal government, placing the sacred human dignity of all people at the center of the work.”

Ward Fitzgerald is the CEO of international real estate private equity firm fund investment group EQT Exeter. The Fitzgeralds are members of the Trustees to the Papal Foundation.

“We have been provided great Providence to be able to be vessels of the Holy Spirit by participating with such a worthy university and its students, faculty, and administration,” Kathy Fitzgerald said in a statement. “We are too well mindful that nothing we have created or hold is our own but graces and gifts from Our Lord to do his work.”

Student rotations at the new center in Washington, D.C., are set to begin this fall on a limited basis and expand in spring 2025.