Sophia heet het nieuwe universitair instituut van de Focolarebeweging, dat een opleiding biedt tot master in de ‘grondbeginselen en perspectieven van een cultuur van eenheid’. Op 13 oktober 2008 begonnen de eerste 40 studenten aan deze universitaire studie in Loppiano, het internationale ‘stadje’ van de Focolarebeweging in Toscane. Het is de start van een ‘eigen universiteit’, waar stichtster Chiara Lubich van droomde. De officiële opening vond plaats op 1 december 2008.
Opleiden tot 'wereldburgers'
Veertig studenten afkomstig uit Europa, Azië, Afrika en Zuid-Amerika zijn ingeschreven aan het nieuwe universitaire instituut Sophia. De opleiding met de Griekse naam voor ‘wijsheid’ wil opleiden tot ‘wereldburgers’ door een verbinding te leggen tussen studie en leven en door een interdisciplinaire aanpak.
Leidersrol
Piero Coda, decaan van het nieuwe instituut, legt uit: “Dat wil zeggen mensen een integrale vorming bieden om ze voor te bereiden op een leidersrol in een wereld waar de ontmoeting tussen culturen, religies en wetenschappelijke projecten op de eerste plaats staat. Dat is de uitdaging waar wij voor staan,” aldus Piero Coda.
Kruispunt tussen verschillende disciplines
Coda, hoogleraar in systematische Theologie aan de universiteit van Lateranen in Rome, geeft aan dat de studie en het onderzoek van Sophia plaatsvinden op een kruispunt tussen de verschillende disciplines, die “tegenwoordig te vaak fragmentarisch zijn en als concurrenten tegenover elkaar staan”.
Onderlinge relaties
Er wordt in Sophia veel belang gehecht aan het aspect van de onderlinge relaties, zegt de decaan. “Dat is een kernwaarde van het evangelie, die een vernieuwende kans is voor menselijke en culturele groei. De verbinding tussen studie en het met elkaar leven in een grote gemeenschap, waarvan de onderlinge relatie de basis vormen, schenkt ook nieuw licht op de relatie tussen disciplines.”
Ontstaan
Het ontstaan van het instituut, gaat terug op een intuïtie van de stichteres van de Focolarebeweging, Chiara Lubich. Samen met een groep deskundigen van verschillende disciplines werkte zij aan de totstandbrenging van de academie, eerst een aantal jaren in de vorm van summer schools.
Erkend instituut
In een decreet van 7 december 2007 werd het universitaire instituut ‘Sophia’ officieel erkend door het Vaticaan. De studenten van ‘Sophia’ zijn 40 jongvolwassenen, die al een bacheloropleiding hebben afgerond. Ze komen uit 16 landen en vertegenwoordigen 20 verschillende studierichtingen. Het onderwijs, dat gegeven wordt in het Italiaans, voorziet in het eerste jaar in basiscursussen theologie, filosofie, sociale wetenschappen en wetenschappelijk denken. In het tweede jaar kunnen de studenten kiezen tussen een cursus filosofie en theologie, of een vorming in politiek en economie.
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Persbericht [Engels]
PRESS RELEASE – 2.12.2008
INAUGURATION OF SOPHIA UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, 1st December 2008
Message of the Pope
“The new academic center, promoting an authentic Christian thought capable of connecting faith and reason, favors a wider and integral vision of knowledge with other religions and cultures and the intellectual and spiritual growth of the young generations.” This was the wish the Pope expressed for the academic center that today was inaugurated in the international little town of the Focolare in Loppiano: the Sophia University Institute.
The telegram, signed by the Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, was read by the Grand Chancellor of Sophia, the Archbishop of Florence, Giuseppe Betori, to a public of 2,000. Among them were university rectors and notables in academia interested in collaborations and cultural exchanges, coming from many countries: India, United States, Thailand, Kenya, Japan, Venezuela and Costa Rica.
There was a real interest also on the part of politicians with ambassadors, deputies, and local officials present. There were representatives from the ecumenical world, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.
Benedict XVI, in expressing “real appreciation” for this cultural initiative, recalled how it was “strongly desired by Chiara Lubich.”
New school of thought
The event today, in fact, “represents the realization of a great dream that Chiara Lubich had ardently held at heart since the ‘60s,” as Emmaus Maria Voce, president of the Focolare and vice-chancellor of the University Institute, underscored. “This dream was nourished in her by the awareness that the charism of unity given to her by the Holy Spirit contained a patrimony of such Light that one day it would be expressed in a doctrine,” in a new school of thought.
Chiara herself gave the new University Institute the Greek name “Sophia,” because it hopes to foster Wisdom so that the different disciplines: philosophy, theology, economy, science, medicine and politics may be imbued with it so as to make an integral and authentic humanity grow.
Community of professors and students
The Grand Chancellor, Giuseppe Bertori, Archbishop of Florence, emphasized the communitarian dimension of culture, stating that “we cannot really understand what it means to create culture if we do not understand the importance of community life: for this reason the university is constituted like a community of professors and students. A new university institute, with clear Christian aspirations is an important opportunity both for those who are part of it, as well as for Italian society.”
Innovative cultural proposal
We are living “in a time that is invested, perhaps as never before, by the anguished experience of fragmentation and multiplicity, which finds it hard to intuit the practical and productive ways to encounter and dialogue,” underscored Piero Coda, rector of the new academic center. Sophia presents an innovative cultural proposal: to make it possible for sciences to open up the spaces of reasoning and for cultures and religions to meet up “in a disarmed openness to the mystery of God and to each other so as to build peace among humanity.”
Breaching the gap between heart and mind
And many voices, from the worlds of culture and science expressed the hope that Sophia has brought to life, characterized by the connection between studies and life. Dr. Anthony Cernera from the USA, president of the International Federation for Catholic Universities, in fact indicated the breaching of the gap between heart and mind as “one of the fundamental challenges of our time.” He further sustained that “the role of the academic world does not only regard ‘the mind.’ The education of a person needs to embrace the whole person.”
'A place of trust'
The physicist Ugo Amaldi spoke about the debated questions posed by genetic engineering, the genetically modified organisms in the agricultural field and on nuclear energy, all which call for political decisions and democratic participation. He indicated to the newborn University Institute a goal: to be “a place of trust,” for an exchange between scientists, technologists and citizens that would not be stained with personal interests or suspicions. It is a goal that the scientist sees as attainable on “the fertile ground of Loppiano” where the SUI stands: “because here intellectual trust has its roots in mutual love. Here citizens can live in a new way their membership to a society that calls for complex technological decisions, where they can be informed and debate together, with the certitude of not being manipulated.”
Recompose the fragmentation
The urgency to recompose the fragmentation was also underscored by Cardinal Grokolewski, prefect for the Congregation for Catholic Education, in a message read by the vice-secretary of the Vatican department, Bishop Vincenzo Zani. “To a university marked by the compartmenting and the functionality of the learning processes, it is necessary to offer academic programs aimed at the unity of knowledge, built through patient and rigorous interdisciplinary research, enlightened by the Gospel message.” And he defined this goal of the University Institute “an intellectual and moral force, destined to spread its positive effects for the benefit of all humanity.” According to the Cardinal, this “qualified academic institution is particularly suited to respond to the needs of a new humanism.”
Mutual love as the necessary humus
The first to be actors in this new cultural initiative are the students. Their witnesses, to which ample time was given in the afternoon, were very incisive. Benedictine Ingalite Batabana from Congo, with a degree in philosophy, represented the students: “The trans-disciplinary nature and the intercultural dynamics of Sophia were the answers to my deepest desires. A life founded on mutual love,” she said, “is the necessary humus for studies that become the place for a greater aspiration that generates new understandings. We are aware that we are experiencing this new humanism born from the Gospel, and we can be the expression of a new way of thinking at the service of humanity’s hopes.”
Collaborations with other universities
Today new possibilities for collaborations and exchanges have emerged in the encounter between the teaching body of Sophia and rectors of a few universities that in these years have conferred Chiara Lubich with an honorary degree: Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut (USA), Liverpool Hope University (Great Britain), The Catholic University Cecilio Acosta in Maracaibo (Venezuela): the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas in Manila (Philippines), the Claretianum Institute of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.
The common commitment taken is that of promoting exchanges and informal meetings, but on-going ones between the “friends of Sophia,” as the rectors defined themselves. A moment of sharing then followed with the 50 university professors present at the inauguration, which concluded with the commitment not only to launch different collaborations, but also to become instruments of a live and efficacious presence of wisdom in their own university centers, as the vice-chancellor Maria Voce expressed in her wish at the conclusion.
