Xavier University is the fourth oldest Jesuit University and the sixth oldest Catholic university in the United States.[11] The school was founded in 1831[12] as a men's college in downtown Cincinnati next to St. Francis Xavier Church on Sycamore Street. The Athenaeum, as it was then called, was dedicated to the patronage of Saint Francis Xavier by Bishop Edward Fenwick on October 17, 1831.[13] Upon Bishop John Baptist Purcell's request, the Society of Jesus took control of The Athenaeum in 1840, and the name was changed to St. Xavier College in honor of the 16th century Spanish Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier who, like the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, was a Spanish Basque.