Thomas Francis Maloney

[2] Maloney's alma mater, the American College at Louvain, was shuttered in 1939 because of the imminent Second World War.

It remained closed through the years of the war, and it was only in 1949 that the possibility of reopening the college began to be discussed again by the American bishops.

[3] Maloney's bishop, Most Reverend Russell McVinney of the diocese of Providence, was keen to reopen the college.

Maloney, as the first American to serve as rector of the college, faced the difficult challenge of rebuilding a seminary that had been dormant for more than a decade.

By 1957, the college had been significantly renovated, and the number of seminarians had risen to over one hundred as a result of the 1950s vocations boom in the United States.