“Intellectual charity, soul of the new Europe” is the theme of the First European Day of University Students promoted by the CCEE (Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe) and by the European committee of University Chaplains in collaboration with the Office for university apostolate of the diocese of Rome. The Day is due to be celebrated in the italian capital on 15 March. It will be inaugurated by a study seminar on the co-patron saints of Europe, to be held in the morning at LUMSA (Free University of Maria Santissima Assunta). In the afternoon a Marian prayer vigil for university students will be held in the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican, in front of the pilgrim icon of Mary “Sedes Sapientiae” from Slovakia. Satellite link-ups with various European universities are also planned. After the entry of the Pope, the recitation of the rosary will begin, at the end of which a torchlight procession will set out. “On the occasion of the 7th centenary of the foundation of the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, it will bear the icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the church of Sant’Ivo, at the old seat of the university”. “In this historic moment in which Europe is engaged in far-reaching changes, not only at the constitutional level, but especially at the level of recognizing common values say the organizers it is essential that believers exercise what is specific about their Christian experience, this service of charity born from the consciousness that intellectual effort constitutes one of the main ways of helping man to seek fundamental values and contents and to form consciences”. Central in this endeavour is the role of the universities because “they are the first to be called by vocation to exercise this sublime form of charity”.
