Cardinal Parolin tells university students their commitment counts

Deborah Castellano Lubov

The engagement of university students at this time is capable of creating a better future.

This was at the heart of a letter sent by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to the president of the “Giuseppe Toniolo” Institute of Higher Studies at Italy's prestigious Università Cattolica, Archbishop Mario Delpini , archbishop of Milan.

The message was sent on the occasion of the University's “100th day”, which fell on Sunday, April 14, the day on which the academic institution turned “one hundred years old”. According to its website, the Day was dedicated to exploring the “demand for the future” of new generations, which involves “a search for meaning” and “an opening of dialogue”.

In his letter, the Cardinal observes that there are places where the future seems to arrive sooner.

“One of them is the academic world,” underlined Cardinal Parolin, “because it is in it that the professionals of tomorrow are prepared and that research is developed from which often derive the most decisive innovations for the world. progress of the human family.

Encouragement from Pope Francis

Earlier in the day, Pope Francis gave a special salute to the university during his speech to Regina Caeli.

He offered his personal encouragement for the University to continue “its important training service, in fidelity to its mission”, always paying attention to today's young people and new societal challenges.

Cardinal Parolin recognized the challenges facing young people in academic environments.

Commitment to the present makes the difference

“Today,” he writes, “important expectations are looking toward the future, but at the same time threatening clouds seem to be accumulating,” of which “young people in academia,” he acknowledges, perceive and experience this tension with particular intensity. »

In such a horizon, he stressed, “we cannot remain prisoner of the past, nor project ourselves naively and hastily towards tomorrow”.

“On the contrary,” clarified the Vatican Secretary of State, “it is necessary to cultivate the awareness that everything is at stake in the present, because there will be no true future if today is not lived fully”.

Cardinal Parolin recalled that it was precisely “the urgency of offering young people the best conditions to build the future from the present” that motivated the founders of the Catholic University.

He also recalled in the letter the 40th anniversary of the first mass gathering of young people in Saint-Pierre, on April 14, 1984, with Pope Saint John Paul II. Here, he observed, the “seed” of World Youth Days flourished, noting how, over these 40 years, the connection between World Youth Days and university pastoral care has grown. increasingly narrow.

Significant response to healthy agitation

The Cardinal then recalled how Pope Francis, during World Youth Day in Lisbon in August last year, had dedicated a specific meeting to the academic world, during which he “outlined a sort of 'manifesto' of the mission of Catholic universities in our country.

In this perspective, Cardinal Parolin emphasized that “precisely because the future cannot be stolen from young people, Pope Francis invited them to invest with great courage in the present to respond to the healthy concern that inhabits their minds and their hearts.