On Easter Sunday, 10 April 1887, Pope Leo XIII gave permission to James Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, for the establishment of the Catholic University of America in the letter Quod in novissimo conventu.

Pope Leo was strongly supportive of the university, writing, “Go on therefore, Beloved Son, together with all Our other Venerable Brethren the Bishops of the United States, to carry to perfection with one mind what you have begun; and let not any one of you be deterred by any difficulty or labor, but let all take courage from the assured hope that they will receive an abundant return for their cares and solicitudes.” He wanted the university to provide the Church with “worthy ministers” for evangelization and the saving of souls and to provide the United States with “her best citizens”.

Ever since October 1866, at the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, the US bishops had expressed to the Vatican their desire to establish a university. At the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884, Washington DC was selected as the site. On 7 March 1889, Pope Leo XIII issued the Apostolic Letter Magni nobis gaudii which approved the constitution and statutes, and granted the university the power to offer degrees. Classes officially began on 13 November 1889.

More on the history of the Catholic University of America
Quod in novissimo conventu in Latin can be found here
Magni nobis gaudi

On 30 March 1913, The Our Sunday Visitor newspaper offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who could successfully provide evidence of the proof for the many anti-Catholic accusations which were then being expressed.

Indeed, one of the reasons Father John Francis Noll had begun the newspaper on 5 May 1912 was precisely to respond to the large amount of anti-Catholic literature published at this time including a particularly vitriolic socialist newspaper called “The Menace”. While Father Noll was especially concerned with “The Menace”, he also wanted to respond to attacks against the Catholic Church contained in other papers such as “The Guardian”, “The Liberator”, “The Sentinel of Liberty”, “The Peril”, “The American Defender”, “The Converted Catholic Evangelist”, and “The Good Citizen”.

The accusations made against the Catholic Church included such things as charges that Catholics could not be loyal to the US Government, the Catholic Church sought to control American politics, Catholics were forbidden to read the Bible, that Catholics worshiped statues, that monasteries and convents were full of immorality, that the Jesuits taught the principle “the end justifies the means”, that the Fourth Degree of the Knights of Columbus required its members to exterminate Protestants and that the Jesuits promised to do the same, that women were forced into convents against their will and that Catholics wanted to destroy public education.

Our Sunday Visitor would again offer this reward over the following decades but it was never claimed.