University of Saint Francis: A Franciscan Foothold in Fort Wayne
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
The University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne traces its origins to eighteen ninety, when the Sisters of Saint Francis of Perpetual Adoration started a teacher training school in Lafayette, Indiana. The school moved to Fort Wayne in nineteen forty-four. The order had come to Indiana from Germany in the eighteen-seventies, fleeing Bismarck's Kulturkampf, the political campaign that suppressed Catholic institutions across the German states.
They founded hospitals, schools, and eventually what became USF. The university today enrolls roughly two thousand students and maintains the Franciscan emphasis on service and care, with strong programs in health sciences and education. It sits adjacent to the John H.
Bass Mansion, a reminder that this corner of Fort Wayne was home to both industrial wealth and Catholic education in the same late-Victorian decades. The Sisters' institution outlasted the mansions and the factories and remains one of the anchoring institutions of Catholic higher education in northern Indiana.
