Ready for the common space” “

“The Church in Europe is ready for the goal of 2010, when there will be a common space for European universities”, says Msgr. Lorenzo Leuzzi, co-ordinator of the European Committee of University Chaplains and director of the Office for University Apostolate of the Vicariate of Rome. In a briefing to SIR, Leuzzi summed up the results of the fourth meeting of national delegates for the university ministry, promoted by the CCEE (Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences) and held in Budapest from 23 to 25 September, on the theme: “ University ministry in Europe: prospects and guidelines for a common process”. The meeting brought together bishops, chaplains, priests and laity from 25 countries. “Cultural laboratories” activated “with care” by university teachers and students and “educational projects” in tune with the “most sincere aspirations” of the young, and based on the Christian “roots” of the continent: these are some of the proposals for European universities made by Bishop Cesare Nosiglia of Vicenza, CCEE delegate for catechesis, schools and universities. But the main focal point of the meeting, held “in an atmosphere of great communion and enthusiasm”, was that of the “Lineamenta of university pastoral work in Europe”, which “from now on – Leuzzi told SIR – will become pastoral guidelines, i.e. the basic reference text for activities involving the presence of the Church in the universities of our continent”. The main principles that inspire the “Lineamenta” include a greater “rooting” of university ministry in the local Churches and a firmer commitment to mission, based on the “common responsibility for cultural animation”, decisive in the relation between faith and history, both in Eastern and in Western Europe. In this sense, the “Lineamenta” intend to “avoid two opposing risks: either suffering the predominant cultural influences, or becoming marginal to them”. The objective: the development of “a new integral humanism”, on the basis of the “personalistic and genuinely humanistic centrality of culture” typical of the Christian conception of man, at a time when this dimensions seems “marginal”, while the reduction of knowledge “to what is measurable” prevails. There are roughly a thousand university chaplains in our continent, at the service of a huge “student population” that fluctuates between 8 and 10 million. Other dates on the horizon: the European meeting of university teachers, scheduled for June 2007, and the 4th European University Day, to be held on 11 March 2006 on the theme “Christian humanism as the means of a new cooperation between Europe and Africa”; it will culminate in the recitation of the Rosary in the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican, with satellite link ups with Chur, Dublin, Lyon, Madrid, Munich and Moscow.