Vatican
City, 30 January 2014
(VIS) - The
American Catholic University Notre-Dame du Lac, known as Notre Dame,
located in South Bend, Indiana, U.S.A., and funded by Fr. Edward
Sorin in 1842, of the Congregation of Santa Cruz. For this reason,
this morning the Pope received the Managing Board of the institution,
which from its founding, “has made an outstanding contribution to
the Church in your country through its commitment to the religious
education of the young and to serious scholarship inspired by
confidence in the harmony of faith and reason in the pursuit of truth
and virtue.
“The vision which guided Father
Edward Sorin and the first religious of the Congregation of Holy
Cross in establishing the University of Notre Dame du Lac remains, in
the changed circumstances of the twenty-first century, central to the
University’s distinctive identity and its service to the Church and
American society. In my recent Apostolic Exhortation on the Joy of
the Gospel, I stressed the missionary dimension of Christian
discipleship, which needs to be evident in the lives of individuals
and in the workings of each of the Church’s institutions. This
commitment to 'missionary discipleship' ought to be reflected in a
special way in Catholic universities, which by their very nature are
committed to demonstrating the harmony of faith and reason and the
relevance of the Christian message for a full and authentically human
life”.
For this reason, “essential in this
regard is the uncompromising witness of Catholic universities to the
Church’s moral teaching, and the defence of her freedom, precisely
in and through her institutions, to uphold that teaching as
authoritatively proclaimed by the magisterium of her pastors. It is
my hope that the University of Notre Dame will continue to offer
unambiguous testimony to this aspect of its foundational Catholic
identity, especially in the face of efforts, from whatever quarter,
to dilute that indispensable witness”.