History was made on Nov. 5, when Francis, the first Jesuit pope, visited the Gregorian University, the oldest and largest pontifical university in Rome, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1551, which has been run by the Jesuits ever since.
He was warmly welcomed on arrival by Arturo Sosa, S.J., the superior general of the Society of Jesus and the vice grand chancellor of the university, and Mark Lewis, S.J., the rector of the university.
The pope visited the university after he requested the three Jesuit-run institutions of higher learning in Rome—the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Oriental Institute—formally become one university. The change went into effect in May.
Formerly known as the Collegio Romano, the Gregorian University counts among its alumni 27 saints (from Robert Bellarmine to Óscar Romero), 57 blesseds, 16 popes, 36 percent of the current College of Cardinals and 24 percent of the world’s Catholic bishops. Today, 2,952 students from 121 countries are enrolled in the university, among them seminarians, priests, women and men religious, as well as lay men and women.
Francis came at the invitation of the superior general, who asked him to address the question: “What can be the role of the Gregorian University in our time?” Pope Francis gave his response in an hour-long lecture to an audience of 400, mainly academics.
Speaking in Italian, Francis began by referring to the amalgamation of the three Jesuit-run academic institutions into one large university and emphasized the need to have “a vision” if they are to move ahead. He asked, “Have you asked yourselves where are you going and why you are doing the things that you are realizing?”
Francis told them that when he was reflecting on the role of the Gregorian University in our time, he remembered a passage from the letter St. Francis Xavier wrote to St. Ignatius and his first companions from Cochin (today Kochi), India, in January 1544, in which “he expressed his desire to go to all the universities of his time in order ‘to cry out like a madman…[to] those with more learning than charity’ so that they might feel compelled to become missionaries for the love of their brothers and sisters.”
He drew laughs from the audience when he added, “Don’t worry, I won’t start crying out, but my intention is the same, that is to remind you to be missionaries for the love of the ‘fratelli’ [brothers and sisters] and to be available to the call of the Lord…. It is the Lord who inspires and sustains the mission. One does not have to replace the Lord with our own pretensions that render the plan of God bureaucratic, overpowering, rigid and without warmth.”
“This is a place where the mission ought to express itself through the action of formation, and putting one’s heart into it,” the pope said. He noted that in his recent encyclical, “Dilexit Nos,” he had emphasized that “the heart is the place of departure and of arrival in every relation, with God and with the sisters and brothers.”
Francis recalled that St. Ignatius founded the Collegio Romano in 1551 because, as his secretary later wrote, “the good of Christianity and of the whole world depends on the good formation of the youth, for which there is a great need of virtuous and wise masters, [and so] the Society [of Jesus] took on itself the task, less visible but no less important, of this formation.”
Then, almost as an aside, Francis said he wished the university could retain the original name—Collegio Romano. He said he hoped this could somehow come about.
He went on to recall how a group of 16 Jesuits settled into a small house in Rome in 1551, not far from the present university, on the door of which was written “School of grammar, humanity, Christian doctrine. Free.” He noted that at the time, only the privileged few had access to education; a free school was a novelty. “That reality is not yet extinct!” the pope remarked.
He said the inscription on the door of the house where the Gregorian had its origins is “an invitation to humanize the knowledge of faith, to set alight and reanimate the spark of grace in the human, and give attention to trans-disciplinary work in research and in teaching.”
He asked if the university “is considering the impact of artificial intelligence on teaching and research” and remarked, “No algorithm can substitute for poetry, irony and love.” He said that “students need to discover the power of fantasy, to see inspiration sprout, to make contact with their own emotions, and to know how to express their own sentiments.” In this way, he said, they learn “to come into contact with the great thinkers,” “experience the joy of discovery” and “learn from their mistakes.”
“In this university,” the pope said, “we need to produce knowledge that cannot be born of abstract ideas conceived only at the table, but that looks [at] and feels the travails of concrete history, that has its sources in contact with the lives of peoples and with the symbols of culture, and in listening to the hidden questions and to the cry that rises from the suffering flesh of the poor.” He emphasized that “it is necessary to touch this flesh; to have the courage to walk in the mud and to dirty one’s hands.”
For so many centuries, those focused on sacred studies “have looked down on everyone,” he said, and consequently, “we have made many mistakes.”
“This is a complex world, and research asks for everyone’s input. No one can presume they are enough,” no matter how qualified or experienced, he said. “No single thought alone can be the perfect answer to problems.”
“Now is the time for us all to be humble, to acknowledge what we do not know, that we need others, especially those who do not think like me,” he said.
The university must be transformed into “a house of the heart” where there are fewer lecterns and more round tables, he said, places where all involved see themselves as “beggars of knowledge, touching the wounds of history,” recognizing the dignity of everyone without exception.
Returning to the question of what the role of the Gregorian university can be today, he hoped the merger of the three academic institutions would not be a case of “mere administrative restructuring” but rather the occasion for “a redefinition of your mission.”
Francis said there is a need for an Ignatian-style examination of conscience. He asked, “Can this mission [of the university] still translate the charism of the Society? Can it express and give concreteness to its founding grace?”
“The founding grace has a name: Ignatius Loyola, and a concrete formulation in the Spiritual Exercises and in the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus,” he said.
The pope went on to elaborate what this means in concrete terms for the Gregorian. He said that for teachers in the university, “the ultimate goal, through study, should be to foster a relationship with the Lord.”
Staff and professors need to discover their mission, which entails “carrying on your shoulders the history of faith, wisdom and suffering of all times, walking in the present that is in flames and needs your help and holding the future by the hand. Together: past, present and future,” he said.
The Jesuit pope said the mission of the university “must be one of service”—diakonia was the word he used—“service of culture” and “service of the continual recomposition of the fragments of every change of epoch,” and it should “seek communion after conflicts, both external and internal conflicts.”
Francis told his Gregorian audience, “Ask yourselves if the choice of teachers, the offer of programs of study, the choice of deans, presidents, directors, and above all that of the highest academic authorities, responds to that ‘quality’ that still justifies the entrusting of this university, by the bishop of Rome, to the Society of Jesus.”
Pope Francis concluded by reminding them yet again that “a university should be a house of the heart” and said that, according to the Ignatian charism, “culture is a mission of love.”
Material from Catholic News Service was used in this report.
