John Nobili

Background

John Nobili was born on April 8, 1812 in Rome, Italy, where his father was a lawyer of repute.

Education

Nobili was trained in a Roman college.

Career

Nobili entered the Society of Jesus in 1826, and after following the regular Jesuit course of study he taught in the Society's colleges at Rome, Loretto, Placentia, and Fermo.

Ordained in 1843, he volunteered for the American missions and accompanied Father Pierre-Jean De Smet to the Rocky Mountains. Here in the wild regions of Oregon and of New Caledonia as far as Fort Stuart, this Roman, accustomed to the mild Italian climate, spent six years of terrible suffering from hunger and cold. Often reduced to a diet of herbs and of the flesh of dogs and wolves, he labored with desperate intensity as a missioner and as superior of the Oregon-Rocky Mountain missions among the Okanagans, Flatheads, and Kalispels, of whom he is said to have baptized about 1, 500.

He won the merited approval of its rough inhabitants in the severe cholera epidemic of 1850, during which he nursed the sick and comforted the dying.

A year later, Bishop José S. Alemany assigned him to a mission at Santa Clara, where he opened a school for boys with the assistance of two lay teachers and a matron. The institution attracted attention because of its technical instruction in mining and grew rapidly as the population of the state increased. In 1855 the college was incorporated as a university with Nobili as president. A scholarly, urbane man of excessive zeal, with the aid of brother Jesuits expelled from Sardinia, he made this pioneer school unequaled on the Pacific Coast. His death, at a comparatively early age, was from lockjaw, occasioned by his stepping upon a nail.

Achievements

• John Nobili is said to have been the first priest to preach in San Francisco. He founded Santa Clara College in California.

References

• University Of Santa Clara: A History From The Founding Of Santa Clara Mission In 1777 To The Beginning Of The University In 1912