陈元
The institution was originally established in Beijing in 1925 by the Benedictines of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, at the request of the Holy See. Fu Jen, then commonly known as the Catholic University of Peking, was itself a successor to the Fu Jen Academy (), which was created through the efforts of Catholic scholars Ma Xiangbo and Ying Lianzhi. The university's first president (1925–1927) was the American missionary George Barry O'Toole, OSB. He was succeeded by Chen Yuan, a Chinese Protestant and renowned historian, who remained university president until the school's forced closure by the Chinese Communist government in 1952.