With international students becoming an increasingly large group at college campuses, Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholic colleges to follow the example of Blessed John Henry Newman and commit themselves to their students intellectual, cultural and spiritual formation, the Vatican Information Service reports.
Pope Benedict XVI, addressing his comments to the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, said, “Today more than ever the openness of cultures to one another is the most fertile terrain for dialogue among people committed to seeking authentic humanism. The meeting of cultures in universities must, then, be encouraged and supported.”
Pope Benedict said that students’ “intellectual, cultural and spiritual formation” helps them potentially become “architects and protagonists of a more human world.”
Pope Benedict said, according to VIS:
Universities are a vital field for the evangelization of the Church, because “the spread of ‘weak’ ideologies in various sectors of society is a call to Christians to make fresh efforts in the academic world, to encourage the new generations in their search for and discovery of the truth about man and God”. In this context, Benedict XVI used the example of Blessed John Henry Newman whose life, “so strongly associated with the world of academe, confirmed the importance and beauty of promoting an educational environment in which intellectual formation, ethics and religious commitment walk hand in hand”.
“Young Christians, who come from different cultures but belong to the one Church of Christ, can show that the Gospel is the Word of hope and salvation for men and women of all peoples and cultures, of all ages and epochs”, the Holy Father concluded.
Adam Wilson
CNS Staff
Matthew Archbold
Charlotte Hays
