VATICAN - Patronal feast of the Pontifical Urbaniana University: "The art of global aspiration to fraternity"

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - "The long period of crisis of the pandemic has deprived us of many things, the value of which appeared precious to us precisely because they were withheld from us. We were not able to celebrate our Patronal Feasts 2020 and 2021 either! Only since the first semester of the current academic year, although with a still somewhat uneasy feeling, we got a foretaste of the normality of university life again", Father Leonardo Sileo, OFM said in his greeting to the participants of the Patronal Feast of the Pontifical Urbaniana University yesterday, March 30th.
The day, celebrated on the occasion of the feast of the Annunciation of the Lord, was opened with a Solemn Eucharistic Concelebration presided over by the Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical University, Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, in the College Chapel. The Rector of the University stressed: "The last celebration of 2019 was dedicated to the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, was signed in Abu Dhabi, on February 4, 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb. The theme of the 2022 celebrations is 'Fratelli Tutti, without borders'. When I asked His Eminence to tell us about the universal brotherhood dreamed of by Pope Francis, the horrible war waged in Ukraine, in Christian land, in the heart of the European continent, whose spiritual lungs are both of peoples of ancient Christian faith, had not yet broken out", the Rector said, taking up the speech the Pope made on the occasion of the delivery of what he himself defined as a 'social encyclical'.
Fr. Sileo therefore hoped all the more that the University, "a microcosm of encounter between the peoples of the earth, will become the workshop where the art of the universal quest for brotherhood will be taught and learned". The Rector's welcome address was followed by the keynote address by Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., Prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development. "It was with pleasure that I accepted the invitation to reflect with you on Pope Francis' recent encyclical, starting from the suggestive provocation of the title proposed to me: 'Human Fraternity: Utopia or Redemption?', said the cardinal, asking himself: "Is it reasonable that today we continue to think "in utopias"? In other words, to put it in the language of Pope Francis, we must ask ourselves: does it still make sense to invest in a projective imagination?".
"The culture of encounter - continues Cardinal Czerny - becomes the common utopian horizon that allows us to free the individual from the loneliness in which he is trapped by both classical liberalism and Marxist collectivism. It is an integration process that aims to make the person the protagonist of social friendship, recognizing that they belong to a "people". In this sense, solidarity appears as a style of history construction, a vital area in which tensions and conflicts can be overcome in order to achieve pluriform unity: unity is superior to conflict". "Today's liturgy invites us to ask for the grace of spiritual vision to see God in Jesus and in his works", Cardinal Tagle said at the opening celebration of the event. "What do I see? How do I see", were the starting points that the Grand Chancellor addressed. "What did the critics of Jesus see in him? Not the son of God, but a blasphemer who claims to be equal to God. What does Jesus see? The face of God, the Father who heals, the mother who does not forget her child. And what he sees God doing, he does himself. So seeing and doing go together. So let's pray that we see what Jesus sees, that we see how Jesus sees that we do what we see God do", concluded Cardinal Tagle. At the presentation of the awards to deserving students for the 2020-2021 academic year, the Grand Chancellor read the decree of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples approving the new University Regulations (based on the new Statutes). The Statutes state: "The Pontifical Urban University was founded by the Apostolic See as an institution for the study of ecclesiastical disciplines, with a particular orientation to the evangelization of peoples" (art. 1). (AN/AP) (Agenzia Fides, 31/3/2022)

Share: