(Università Pontificia Salesiana, Roma) – “In the name of the Supreme Pontiff Francis and by the authority granted to me by him, I declare the academic year 2022/2023, the eighty-third since the foundation of the University, open.” With these words, last Wednesday, Oct. 19, Fr. Ángel Fernández Artime, Rector Major of the Salesian Congregation and Grand Chancellor of the Salesian Pontifical University (UPS), sanctioned the official start of the new year’s activities.
The inaugural ceremony began in the parish of St. Mary of Hope with the Eucharistic Celebration – presided over by Fr. Á.F. Artime – who in his homily offered important points for reflection: “In my activity as a teacher or as a student, from what inner position do I look at and study reality? In what profound attitudes are my research and thinking rooted? What intentions guide it and what energies fuel it?” In other words, recalling the teachings of the Readings, “do I reason as a psychicós man or do I let the Spirit guide me?”
Women and men who deal with culture and knowledge should not reduce themselves to “psychicós man,” that is, he or she “who lives according to his own psyche and moves within the confines of what is natural to him,” but should follow another model of man, what St. Paul calls “pneumaticós man”: that person who
“allows himself to be led by the Spirit to discover a new, different and unimaginable horizon, who allows himself to be guided by the Spirit, sharing in Jesus’ view of life, in his logic, his mentality, his way of thinking.”
The morning continued with the Academic Act and the Report of the Rector of UPS, Prof. Fr. Andrea Bozzolo, who recalled several important meetings held the previous year, the ongoing focus on research and teaching, the enhancement of external relations, new inter-university agreements, the relaunch of the university publishing house LAS and the University Pastoral. Improvements in the area of facilities and services also continue, although the most relevant process for the life of the University has undoubtedly been the work on developing and drafting the Strategic Project 2022-2027; a project, which aims to look at the challenges that characterize today’s era – social injustice, migration, conflict, the dominance of technology over ethics, radical anthropological questions, sensitivity to the environment, to dialogue between religions, to the search for peace – to ensure that the cultural work of UPS “is strongly anchored in reality and increasingly open to an international scope.”
At the end of the Report, the Rector then introduced the theme that will accompany UPS: “Rethinking Thought. Listening to the Spirit and Interweaving Knowledge,” which was explored in the Academic Prolusion by Msgr. Piero Coda, Secretary General of the International Theological Commission.
In his speech, Msgr. Coda emphasized the “strategic role” of the University in today’s context, “called to offer a true evangelical hermeneutic to better understand life, the world, and men, not a synthesis but a spiritual atmosphere of search and certainty based on the truths of reason and faith.” Hence the call of “Veritatis gaudium” for the reform of curricula and method of teaching and research in the University, according to two basic criteria: a dialogue between knowledge and trans-disciplinarity.
Such a “synodal practice of university life,” as Msgr. Coda called it, “needs the specific contribution of young people. Because, as Don Bosco teaches, education has to be expressed in a communion of life and thought between faculty and students, as an experience of happy and gratuitous reciprocity at the school of the one Teacher.”
After the Prolusion ended, the Grand Chancellor presented University Medals to students who graduated with the highest honors and to a faculty member and an employee distinguished for their faithful and lasting service to UPS.
Source: ANS – “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana”