Asian Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan (XU)
College Description (College Ranking near bottom of listing)
Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan was founded in 1933 by Fr James TG Hayes SJ, Superior of the Philippine Jesuit mission and first Bishop and Archbishop of Cagayan de Oro. In the next 11 years, the two-storey wooden building along Burgos Street that schooled 17 high school male students mushroomed into several buildings along Corrales Street with 614 students. This studentry came from the existing high school; from the college department that was added in 1938 with course offerings in Liberal Arts, Education, and Commerce; and from the Grade School, established in 1940. All these were brought to the ground during the outbreak of World War II which forced the school to close on December 9, 1941. The chemistry laboratory then was used to extract quinine for the government forces. Later on, the campus was used as the Northern Mindanao headquarters of the Japanese troops after they entered Cagayan de Oro on May 2, 1942.
Soon after Cagayan de Oro was freed from the Japanese forces, the school was reduced to rubble when on September 9, 1944, American planes began bombing Cagayan de Oro. “Those liberators wrecked the town of Cagayan and its wharves. When the day was over the old transit showed our college in ruins, the century old cathedral gone, and the lovely house of the Bishop a heap of concrete,” wrote Fr Edward Haggerty SJ, then-Rector of the Ateneo de Cagayan. His successor, Fr Andrew F Cervini SJ, sought the reconstruction of the school. Through their efforts and with the assistance of local and foreign benefactors, the school reopened in 1946 with the usual classes held in partially-restored buildings.
By 1946, collegiate program offerings included Bachelor of Arts, Pre-Legal, and Commerce. The Ateneo de Cagayan Graduate School was opened in 1948. The College of Agriculture was started by Fr William F Masterson SJ in 1953 and the Manresa Farm in 1955. The College of Law also started operations the same year.
In March 1958, two years after Fr Francisco Araneta SJ became Rector, Ateneo de Cagayan was granted the university status. At its inauguration on August 27, 1958, Ateneo de Cagayan was called “Xavier University,” in honor of St Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary to the Indies and companion of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. The alumni, however, insisted the school to retain the “Ateneo de Cagayan” in the official name of the university. In response, the administration combined the old and new names of the school, and thenceforth, known as “Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan.” It became the first university in Mindanao and the first Jesuit university in the Philippines.
Fr Francisco Araneta SJ further explains that the change of name “merely crystallized an old spirit that always had been the soul of all Ateneo schools, the spirit of learning and service, the spirit of purposeful scholarship.
XU Trunk line Number: (088) 853-9800
Address: Xavier University Ateneo de Cagayan, Corrales Avenue, Cagayand e Oro
City, Philippines