 Following his ordination as a priest on April 3, 1788, he immediately left for the United States.Meanwhile, John Carroll, the Bishop of Baltimore, had recently founded the long-planned Georgetown College in the District of Columbia, the first Catholic institution of higher education in the United States.As early as 1785, Carroll had requested that Charles Plowden return a cohort of Maryland Jesuits studying at the college in Liège to the United States so that they could staff the fledging college.