[5] In 1919 Father Agostino Gemelli, Ludovico Necchi, Francesco Olgiati, Armida Barelli, and Ernesto Lombardo founded the Istituto Giuseppe Toniolo di Studi Superiori.

On 7 December 1921, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore was officially inaugurated with a special Mass celebrated by Father Gemelli in the presence of Achille Ratti the Cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, who three months later was elected Pope Pius XI.

On 30 October, in the presence of Italian President Luigi Einaudi, the first stone of the Piacenza campus was laid, with the official opening of the School of Agricultural Sciences taking place in November 1952.

Enormous difficulties had made this long and complicated, and it was not until the end of the 1950s that the Biological Institutes and the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic were built in Rome.

In these Centers, through advanced satellite technology, distance-learning courses were activated in collaboration with the major university campuses.

During World War II, Ezio Franceschini, who supported the Resistance, organized meetings of the Freedom Volunteer Corps (coordination structure of the partisans) in the university.

Towards the end of the war, in 1944, the professor of medieval Latin letters hid, in the basement of Cattolica, a box containing documents and books on the Resistance and FRAMA group founded by Ezio Franceschini.

The SS rummaged everywhere in UCSC to find those cards but, buried among the bones of fifty skeletons dead from an epidemic of plague in the sixteenth century, they remained there and emerged only after the war.

Students who occupied the university were expelled by the rector Ezio Franceschini with the help of the police led by Commissioner Luigi Calabresi.

A few days later, on 25 March, there was the so-called "battle of Largo Gemelli", where thousands of students tried to reopen the university but were strongly repelled by police.

[16] Cattolica has campuses in six Italian cities, with its seat in the historic Cistercian monastery near the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in the heart of Milan.

The restructuring of the Benedictine monastery by Giovanni Muzio in collaboration with the engineer Pier Fausto Barelli began in 1929 and finished twenty years later.

The campus, nestled within the original city walls of Milan, features a facade by Giovanni Muzio, the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, the atrium of the zodiac, and the Great Hall (Aula Magna).

The main section of Gemelli consists of the following buildings: monumental with cloister by Bramante, offices, Gregorianum, Antonianum, Via Lanzone 18, Ambrosianum, Franciscanum, and Domenicanum.

The seat in Via Carducci 28/30 is located in the Palazzo Gonzaga and was built by Arpesani in a Lombard style incorporating the existing cloister of St. Jerome.

In 1958, the Higher Council of Education approved the teaching and scientific project and on June 18 of that year with the decree of the President of the Republic, work began on the biological institutes, with classes beginning in November 1961.

These were added to the sixteenth-century complex of the Good Shepherd located in Via dei Musei 41, which accommodates classrooms and laboratories for the Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences.

Other venues are located in Contrada Santa Croce 17, Via Aleardo Aleardi 12, and Via San Martino della Battaglia 11, for a total of approximately 23,464 square meters.

[17] This includes 25 new classrooms, 16 laboratories, a library, a canteen, study halls, ample spaces for socialization and sports activities as well as offices for administrative and teaching staff.

[20] On 19 March 1995 Pope John Paul II laid the foundation stone of the Center for High Technology Research and Education in Biomedical Sciences in Campobasso, which was inaugurated on September 16, 2002.

The atheneum centres were established in 2007 and have structures for the conception, development, and implementation of research projects and training on social issues.

The UCSC Library System works with numerous national and international bodies: IFLA - International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, AIB; Associazione Italiana Biblioteche, AIDA; Associazione Italiana per la Documentazione Avanzata, NDLTD; Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, LIBER; Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche, LOCKSS; Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe, CLOCKSS; Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe, NEREUS e INNOVATIVE.

[31] EDUCatt deals with the creation of books useful for the study, commissioned by the teachers, taking care of the editing, layout and graphics, to quality control and implementation, also depending on the demands and the type of publication.

the first covering services and current affairs, and the second devoted to news from the headquarters of Cattolica (Milan, Brescia, Piacenza-Cremona and Rome).

Youcatt, the web TV of the UCSC[32] (Brescia), debuted in September 2009 and is in charge of the university hosted events, foreign experiences of students, and topical issues.

[36] The code is based on principles such as integrity, honesty, legality, solidarity, subsidiarity, hospitality, dialogue, excellence, dignity, the promotion of merit, and individual skills, as well as the prevention and rejection of any unjust discrimination, violence, abuse and improper treatment.

The telecommunication stations UCPoint & InfoPoint, located on all campuses, perform clerical duties and provide information related to teaching and services.

[42] The Alumni Cattolica Ludovico Necchi Association was founded in Milan in 1930 and includes all the graduates in the various professional fields of the UCSC.

Among the best-known people who have attended Università Cattolica are Italian political leaders at Minister-level, such as Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Ciriaco De Mita, Amintore Fanfani, Giovanni Maria Flick, Romano Prodi, Lorenzo Ornaghi, Cécile Kashetu Kyenge; Italy's first woman cabinet minister, Tina Anselmi; former Governor General of Canada and former Secretary-General of La Francophonie, Michaëlle Jean; banker Angelo Caloia; ENI founder Enrico Mattei; fashion designer Nicola Trussardi; post-Keynesian economist Luigi Pasinetti; religious leaders Paolo Sardi and Angelo Scola; singer Roberto Vecchioni; gymnast Igor Cassina and among its young alumni the internet entrepreneur Augusto Marietti.

Among its most famous faculty members are banker Giovanni Bazoli, archaeologist Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Communion and Liberation founder Luigi Giussani, international relations scholar Michael Cox, economist Massimo Beber, and theorist of international relations and United States foreign policy John Ikenberry.