Pope Pius XII has sent a letter congratulating Fordham University on its 100th anniversary, which has just been celebrated.
The Pope, who received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Fordham in l936, when as Cardinal Pacelli he visited the United States, recalled with pleasure his visit to Fordham and wrote that " our paternal joy is, indeed, deepened and made more intimate by the thought that we are numbered amongst your alumni and by the happy recollection of our visit with you some years ago, when we had occasion to see with our own eyes the evidence of your outstanding accomplishments for God and country."'
"We are greatly consoled," he continued, " in the midst of the sorrows which afflict our apostolic heart, by the thought of the many thousands of students who have gone forth from Fordham University, carefully trained in the secular sciences and arts, deeply imbued with the principles of the faith, and ready and eager, both in mind and in heart, to defend the Kingdom of God, to contribute generously to the advancement of Christian civilisation and to live at peace with their fellowmen." •