Franz Ehrle  Franz Ehrle, S.J., (17 October 1845 – 31 March 1934) was a German Jesuit priest and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the Archivist of the Secret Archives of the Vatican, in the course of which he became a leading agent in the revival of Thomism in the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was born in Isny im Allgäu in the Kingdom of Württemberg, the son of Franz Ehrle, a physician, and Berta von Frölich. He was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch. He joined the Society of Jesus on 20 September 1861. After completing the two years of his novitiate program of formation at Groheim, Hohenzollern, he followed the course of humanities at the College of Friedricksburg in Münster, and later at the Jesuit college at Maria Laach Abbey, where he studied philosophy (1865–1868). For the regency phase of his training in the Society of Jesus, from 1868-1873 Ehrle was sent to teach at his old secondary school, Stella Matutina, where he taught English, French and philosophy. Because of an anti-Jesuit policy that followed the publication of the Kulturkampf in Germany, Ehrle, along with other German companions, had to carry on his studies abroad. He did his studies in theology at Ditton Hall, the Jesuit seminary in Liverpool, England (1873–1877). After being ordained a priest on 24 September 1876 in Liverpool, Ehrle did pastoral work in a home for the poor at Preston, Lancashire, before being transferred in 1878 to Tervuren, Belgium, where the German Jesuit periodical "Stimmen aus Maria-Laach" ("Voices from Maria Laach") had established its office in exile, to serve as its editor. When Pope Leo XIII opened the Vatican Secret Archives in 1880, Erhle was called to Rome to do research on the official correspondence between the Holy See and Germany during the Thirty Years War. The work progressed very slowly as a large number of documents were as yet lacking detailed catalogs. Ehrle became more and more involved, but, responding to Pope Leo's call for a renewal in Thomistic studies, his interests shifted to gathering and cataloging books and manuscripts relating to scholasticism. To do so he visited other European libraries.