Alpha Delta Gamma is not the oldest national fraternity and yet, one of the few that traces its roots into the antiquity of the Middle Ages. Strange as it may seem, the history of this American-born fraternity has its beginnings in medieval Europe. For, on December 24, 1491, the year before Columbus discovered the New World and claimed it for Ferdinand and Isabella, a son was born to the Lord of the Great castle of Loyola in Guipuzcoa, in the Basque country of northwest Spain. Thirty years later at the siege of Pamplona a cannon ball shattered the leg of Ignatius Loyola finishing his military career. But his life's work was just about to begin. Within a few years his dynamic new moral spirit swept across the face of Renaissance Europe.

In 1789, as George Washington was being sworn in as President, missionary members of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola established Georgetown University - the forefather of all Catholic Colleges and Universities in the United States. The country grew and as it did, Catholic colleges spread. Fraternities flourished at a few for a short time, but for the most part The Roaring 20's found few fraternities on Catholic college campuses. There was a need for a dynamic new spirit to bring fraternities to Catholic colleges. A fraternity that would not discriminate on the basis of faith, race or ethnicity, one that would be founded on the ideals of the Society of Jesus.

Read more about the Life of St. Ignatius Loyola here.