Saint Xavier University

Saint Xavier University (or SXU) is a private Roman Catholic university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1846 by the Sisters of Mercy, the university enrolls 3,749 students. History Saint Xavier University was founded as a women's college by the Sisters of Mercy in 1846 at the request of Bishop William Quarter. With the City of Chicago less than 10 years old, the religious sisters, under the guidance of Mother Mary Francis Xavier Warde, R.S.M., established Saint Francis Xavier Female Academy. The Academy, which would later become Saint Xavier College, and finally Saint Xavier University, was the first Mercy College in the world and is the oldest chartered college in the city of Chicago. In the year 1846, five sisters of Mercy were sent to the city of Chicago from Pittsburgh to start Catholic work in the new city. The original campus (then referred to as an academy), soon gains, in 1947, the state charter which allowed for the granting on degrees from the academy. After this location (Wabash Avenue between Madison and Monroe in downtown Chicago) was burned down in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the campus was rebuilt on the southern boundary of Chicago. In 1915 the Sisters of Mercy's hard work to open a college for women became a reality when the school became an official college, teaching "all branches of higher learning."