Vatican City, 10 April 2014 (VIS) –
This morning Pope Francis received in audience the professors,
students and non-teaching staff of the Gregorian Pontifical
University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical
Oriental Institute. These institutions, brought together in a
consortium by Pope Pius XI in 1923, were entrusted to the Society of
Jesus and the Holy Father recalled the importance of collaboration
between them in “safeguarding historical memory and, at the same
time, taking responsibility for the present and looking to the future
with creativity and imagination”.
Pope Francis indicated two aspects that
should characterise the task of the members of the consortium, both
teachers and students. The first is to acknowledge the value of the
place where they work and study – the city and above all the Church
of Rome. “There is a part and there is a present. There are the
roots of faith: the memories of the Apostles and the Martyrs; and
there is the ecclesial 'today', the current path of this Church which
presides over charity, the service of unity and universality. All
this must not be taken for granted! … But at the same time you
bring here the variety of your Churches of origin and of your
cultures. … This offers a valuable opportunity for growth in faith
and in opening the mind and the heart to the horizon of Catholicity.
Within this horizon, the dialectic between 'centre' and 'periphery'
takes on a form of its own, an evangelical form according to the
logic of a God who reaches the centre from the periphery, to then
return to the periphery”.
The second aspect was the relationship
between study and spiritual life, and which constitutes “one of the
challenges of our times: transmitting knowledge and offering a key to
a vital understanding, not an accumulation of unconnected notions.
There is a need for a true evangelical hermeneutics to better
understand life, the world, and humankind, not a synthesis but a
spiritual atmosphere of research and certainty based on the truths of
reason and faith. Philosophy and theology enable us to acquire the
convictions that structure and strengthen intelligence and enlighten
will … but all this is fruitful only if it is done with an open
mind and on one's knees. The theologian who is satisfied with his
complete and conclusive thought is mediocre. A good theologian and
philosopher is open, or incomplete in thought, always open to the
'maius' of God and of the truth, always in development. … And the
theologian who does not pray or does not adore God ends up sinking
into the most repugnant narcissism. And this is an ecclesiastical
sickness. Narcissism in theologians and in thinkers is harmful and
repugnant”.
The Holy Father continued, “The aim
of study in any pontifical university is ecclesial. Research and
study are to be integrated with personal and community life, with
missionary commitment, with fraternal charity and sharing with the
poor, with attention to inner life in relation to the Lord. Your
Institutes are not machines for producing theologians and
philosophers; they are communities in which one grows, and growth
occurs in the family”. The university family is “indispensable
for creating an attitude of concrete humanity and wisdom, making
students into people capable of building humanity, of transmitting
the truth in a human dimension, of knowing that if there lacks the
goodness and beauty of belonging to a working family one ends up as
an intellectual without talent, an ethicist without goodness, a
thinker lacking the splendour of beauty and simply 'adorned' with
formalism. Respectful and daily contact with the laboriousness and
the witness of the men and women in your institutions will give you
the quota of realism necessary for your science to be human and not
merely that of the laboratory”, he concluded.