Students Beyond Borders: American Catholics and the Work of Pax Romana, 1937–1947

From August 27 to September 9, 1939 more than 400 delegates from thirty-eight countries gathered at The Catholic University of America and later at Fordham University for the eighteenth annual Pax Romana Congress. Upon hearing the news of Germany's invasion of Poland, the participants, including Polish and German students joined together in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, a gesture deeply symbolic of the mission of Pax Romana as an international student peace movement. Coming at the eve of the Second World War, the congress was a defining moment in the life of this global movement. Under the leadership of young American lay Catholics, the congress established a wartime office at The Catholic University of America, and mobilized American students into the National Federation of Catholic College Students and coordinated relief work for displaced students. Decades before social media and the World Youth Days, the 1939 congress and the wider Pax Romana network enabled students to build bridges and cross borders in meaningful ways just as a war was threating to break the world apart. This article explores the impact of this congress in developing a new vision for Pax Romana and its understanding of the church-world relationship in subsequent decades.