St. Joseph's University, Beirut
LEBANON, 2001, St. Joseph's 125th anniversary,
Scott 554, portraying Fr. Ambroise Monnot, SJ,
the French Jesuit who founded the university
LEBANON, 2014, celebrating three anniversaries: the Faculty of Law (1883-2013), the Faculty of Medicine (1913-2013) and the Faculty of Engineering (1913-2013),
Scott 704
LEBANON, 1938, commemorating a medical congress, Scott C75-78
The Jesuits first arrived in Lebanon in the 1640's, but their initial efforts there ended with the Suppression in 1773. French Jesuits returned in 1831 and began a school in Ghazir, north of Beirut, which moved to Beirut in 1875 as an inter-ritual seminary, the first beginning of the modern St. Joseph's University. For two years Fr. Ambroise Monnot, SJ toured the United States and Canada, enlisting the aid of 80,000 donors whose contributions made possible the purchase of land and the construction of buildings and a church. The campus grew as faculties were added and student enrollment increased. The medical facility, pictured in the 1938 issue above, was opened in 1881. Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, former superior general of the Society of Jesus, earned his doctorate in theology at St. Joseph's University, and later was professor of general linguistics there.
The Imprimerie Catholique, Beirut
LEBANON, 1939, Scott 152-54
The stamps above bear the image of the Bet-al-Din Palace. It is the first set to bear the imprint "Imp.-Catholique-Beyrouth-Liban," meaning that they were printed at the Imprimerie Catholique in Beirut, Lebanon, which was founded by the Jesuits. The first book to roll off the press was the Imitation of Christ (in Arabic) in 1854. It was not until these stamps in 1939 that the press began to print stamps, but in the years that followed many stamps were printed there for Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.