John Paul the Great Catholic University to double its academic space

The renovation is expected to be completed in early 2025.

What is JPCatholic? 

Connolly launched the school in 2006 and it has continued to grow ever since, with a small, but lively, “dynamically Catholic” community of about 300 students. It is now affectionately known as “JPCatholic.”

Connolly was inspired to found the school after a visit to Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, late on a Friday night while in adoration. 

“God hit me over the head and said, ‘I want something like this in San Diego,’” he recalled, adding: “God never put something on my heart [like that] before or afterwards.”

Far from being a creative, Connolly was an engineer and businessman, originally from Ireland. But he saw what he called a “great need” for a “Catholic academic institution that trains people to use the arts for evangelization.”

“And that was in the early 2000s, when the Internet and Internet video was starting to boom,” he recalled. “I felt that the Church desperately needed something in the creative arts so combining what God had put on my heart and looking at the reality of the times led to the genesis of JPCatholic.”

“There’s a huge need in the particular space we’re in,” he said. “The creative arts were something that the Church totally dominated in the Middle Ages [and] the Renaissance… But in the 2020s, it’s not very clear that the Church has any great influence on the arts.”

But Connolly noted that young Catholic creatives are “looking for a place where they can create with people who share their values, and that’s difficult to find.”

(Story continues below)

Subscribe to our daily newsletter

“There’s no shortage of talent. God has produced the talent,” he said. “He just needs a place where they can be together and work on creating together.”