page_title: Robert Molyneux
section_title: Superior of the Maryland Jesuits
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Molyneux / Superior of the Maryland Jesuits
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Ignatius Church at St. Thomas Manor, September 2009
context_page_description: Robert P. Molyneux was an English-American Catholic priest and Jesuit missionary to the United States. Born to a prominent English family, he entered the Society of Jesus and studied at the College of St Omer in France. When the school moved to Bruges, Belgium, he followed, becoming a master. In 1771, he emigrated to the United States as a missionary, where he took up pastoral work in Philadelphia.
  He became the pastor of both Old St. Joseph's Church and Old St. Mary's Church, where he served for 16 years. During that time, he opened the first parochial school in the United States, and edited the first American catechism. His pastorate encompassed the American Revolutionary War, and though he did not expressly commit himself to either belligerent, he largely endorsed the American cause.
  Molyneux then spent several years in the Jesuits' Maryland missions, and was made vicar general for Southern Maryland by the Bishop of Baltimore, John Carroll. In 1793, Carroll appointed Molyneux the second president of Georgetown College, where he oversaw the construction of the Old North building.
context_section_description: When Pope Pius VII was elected supreme pontiff, Emperor Paul I of Russia requested the formal restoration of the Jesuit order. In response, the pope issued the bull Catholicæ Fidei on March 7, 1801, which officially permitted the Society of Jesus to continue existing in the Russian Empire. In turn, the members of the of the Jesuits' former English province sought the pope's permission to be received back into the Society, as members of the Russian province. They pope gave them verbal approval and expressed his desire for the worldwide restoration of the Jesuits, but did not commit this to writing, as the political enemies of the Society remained powerful.
  Seeing these developments, Bishop Carroll instructed his coadjutor, Leonard Neale, (both former Jesuits) to write Gabriel Gruber, the Jesuit Superior General, to request permission for the Maryland Jesuits to join with the Russian province. Gruber responded that he believed that the pope's oraculum vivæ vocis approbation of the Jesuits in Russia authorized him to quietly admit Jesuits from anywhere in the world to the Russian province. However, Bishop Carroll was wary that the papal permission was addressed only to Russia and was not memorialized in writing, which would allow a future pope who was hostile to the Jesuits to declare the American Jesuits insubordinate to the order of suppression. Therefore, he convened all the former Jesuits at St. Thomas Manor, and instructed them that they must each individually choose whether they would accept the risk of re-joining the Society.
  All the Jesuits elected to join the Russian province, and Carroll appointed Molyneux superior of the Jesuits' Maryland Mission on June 21, 1805, with the powers of provincial superior over the Jesuits in the United States. As the first American superior of the restored Society, he resumed the position last held by John Lewis. As superior, he took up residence at St. Thomas Manor. One of his first actions was to oversee the establishment of a Jesuit novitiate at Georgetown on October 10, 1806, and a scholasticate two years after that. Five Jesuits from the Russian province were sent to Maryland to work and teach at Georgetown.
caption: While superior of the Jesuits, Molyneux lived at St. Thomas Manor.
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