Terra Sancta College (Jerusalem)

The building was erected in 1926 to house a boys' school named in Italian "Opera Cardinal Ferrari"[2] in honour of a recently deceased Archbishop of Milan who had shown much engagement for social justice.[3] The project was run by a charitable Catholic lay institution initiated by Cardinal Ferrari, the Congregation of Saint Paul of Milan (established in 1920 as the Company of Saint Paul, since 1924 a Congregation dependent directly on the Holy See, also known in English as the Society of St. Paul (CSP);[3][4] not the Società San Paolo of Alba, as sometimes written).[2] The school was designed by the Franciscan architect Antonio Barluzzi, who crowned the building with a replica of the statue of the Virgin Mary which stands on top of the Milan Cathedral, the Madonnina.[2] It was inaugurated in 1927.[5]

The school operated for two years: in 1928-29 it had 270 enrolled pupils, only one hundred of which were Catholic; and 1929–30, with just 130 pupils.[2] The children were taught in eight separate classes, covering primary school and high school.[2] Its activity ended due to lack of funds, and the property was then entrusted to the safe hands of the Custody of the Holy Land.[2]

Under the Franciscans the Terra Santa College flourished, with a constantly growing number of pupils throughout the 1930s.[2] It remained open to children of all religions, registering 360 pupils in 1936–37, of which 85 were Latin Christians, 171 Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenians, Syriacs, Copts and Protestants, 53 Muslims and 31 Jews.[2] The total number of pupils rose until the closure of the school in 1947, numbering 475 in 1940–41.[2]

In 1947, the British authorities declared the area around the school a security zone, access was forbidden, and the school was forced to close.[2] As a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jerusalem became divided and the Arab pupils living in the eastern part of the city were cut off from their school, which is located in west Jerusalem.[2] The Franciscans, under whom the Terra Sancta College had arguably become the most prestigious school in the Middle East, didn't allow their centre of education to shut down for long, opening a new school in Amman already in 1948 and, in 1949, another Terra Sancta College in the Old City of Jerusalem.[6]

In 1949 the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), whose previous campus on Mount Scopus, now in East Jerusalem, also had to be abandoned, took over part of the premises.[2] Some of the scenes in the novel "A Tale of Love and Darkness" as well as "My Michael" by the Israeli writer Amos Oz play in those years inside the building.[2][7] Several departments of the university moved in, and by the late 1980s several of them were still housed there, including the university publishing house, Magnes Press, the offices of the Friends of the Hebrew University, the Research and Development Authority, and the headquarter of the World Union of Jewish Students, sharing the building with the British Council Library and the Dante Alighieri Society for Italian Culture.[5]

The Custody of the Holy Land pursued the return of the building, and by the end of the 1990s they received it back as their property, which it remains to this day.[2]