VATICAN - The future of the Pontifical Urbaniana University at the center of the Extraordinary Plenary Assembly of the Missionary Dicastery

by Gianni Valente

Rome (Fides News Agency) - The Pontifical Urbaniana University is approaching an important crossroads in its long and unparalleled history. Today and tomorrow, August 29 and 30, the members of the Dicastery for Evangelization (Section for First Evangelization and the New Particular Churches) are participating in an "Extraordinary Plenary Assembly" in Rome, convened ad hoc and with only one item on the agenda.

Cardinals, Bishops, clergymen and missionaries from the five continents will share two intense days dedicated to reflections, reports and debates on the identity, mission, expectations and future of the institution founded nearly four hundred years ago by Pope Urban VIII to support the Churches around the world in their apostolic work of proclaiming the Gospel.     
 
The Plenary is framed in the perspective of a relaunch of university institutions linked to the Holy See as requested several times by Pope Francis, also through the Apostolic Constitution "Veritatis gaudium" on Ecclesiastical Universities and Faculties.  

The Plenary Assembly is an intermediate stage of a shared ecclesial discernment around the present and future path of the Pontifical Urbaniana University. A process of synodal discussion initiated some time ago by the Dicastery in communication with the local Churches. 26 Episcopal Conferences of the Churches present in the relevant territories of the Missionary Dicastery (especially from Asia and Africa) have sent considerations, proposals and expectations on the criteria to follow, and on the operational choices to adopt to make the service rendered to local ecclesial communities by the Pontifical Urbaniana University increasingly effective. After the introductory speech by Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Missionary Dicastery and Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Urbaniana University, the contributions and desires coming from the episcopates will be at the center of the Plenary's synodal work sessions, hosted in the headquarters of the University.  


Identity, history and future

The Pontifical Urbaniana University has a compelling, unique history, viscerally linked from the start with the events of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide (which today corresponds to the section of the Dicastery for Evangelization headed by Cardinal Tagle). 
The University on the Janiculum Hill is the only institution of its importance that has been recognized for centuries as an integral and structural part of a Dicastery of the Holy See, from the point of view of costs as well. The majority of students taking courses at the Pontifical Urbaniana University are also supported with scholarships funded by the Missionary Dicastery. And among the insights that led to its foundation, the marks of foresight and prophecy can still be perceived.  

The Urban College, the first nucleus of what is now the Janiculum University, was established as early as 1627 to train the staff of the local Churches for the mission of proclaiming the Gospel in their respective ecclesiastical circumscriptions.

It was a matter of providing seminarians, priests and nuns with intellectual, pastoral and spiritual tools useful to carrying out their mission at the service of their respective Churches of origin.
Even before the middle of the seventeenth century, in the headquarters of the historic building in Piazza di Spagna (which now houses the Missionary Dicastery), students from territories directly under Propaganda Fide resided and attended classes in Latin, amidst diverse languages and cultural visions of origin, united in faith.

In its immanence in the history of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the Pontifical Urbaniana University has also taken on the genetic connotations that make it a ‘global’ institution. Continually straining to bring together the unity of the Catholic faith with the diversity of cultures, political forms, civilizations, languages. 

The multitudes of students that the Urban College and the Pontifical Urbaniana University brought to Rome from their respective countries, without upsetting their cultures, can also be seen as an extraordinary experiment, "a contribution to mutual understanding and respect between peoples and cultures" (Gianpaolo Romanato), started centuries before the "Erasmus" programs now actuated by modern academic institutions.


Guiding criteria for new steps 

The raison d 'être of the Pontifical Urbaniana University and the boundless horizons to which it looks for missionary vocation do not seem to have tarnished or shrunk. It would suffice for one to be even just vaguely aware of Pope Francis's incessant missionary magisterium, the constant call to "missionary conversion" that he continually addresses to all ecclesial instances. 
 
It is precisely its relevance to missionary dynamism continues to mark the nature of the Pontifical Urbaniana University in a specific and not "comparable" way, and this can also suggest more appropriate criteria and operational choices to revive and reorient its service to the local Churches, recognizing what is now most useful and fruitful for their mission. 

Participants to the Plenary will be able to discuss criteria and proposals to renew academic tools, methodologies and procedures, as well as fields of study to enhance in order to accentuate and apply the attention for contexts and the attitude of listening to local cultures - which have always characterized the academic and educational commitment of the Urbaniana - to the present. The number of study and research centers focusing on specific teaching areas and themes can be expanded, on the model of the Centre for Chinese and Asian Studies already operating in the Urbaniana since 1975. New, sometimes latent, resources such as the relationship with the network of 106 Institutes and Study Centers affiliated or connected in various ways to the Pontifical University, can be enhanced and relaunched in new ways. Centers and Institutes scattered over 40 countries around the world, which also represent valuable channels of contact and constant communion between the academic community of Urbaniana with the local Churches and their institutions of study and formation.


A redevelopment that has already begun

During work sessions, the first effects of the phase of renewal and reorientation of the training offer which started last year can also be exposed and evaluated, since - in September 2023 - Pope Francis appointed Professor Vincenzo Buonomo Pontifical Delegate for the Pontifical Urbaniana University, with the functions of Magnificent Rector (see Fides 14/9/2023).    

In the Decree appointing Professor Buonomo, Pope Francis also referred to the urgency of "reviewing the structure of the University and conforming to the Apostolic Constitution "Veritatis gaudium", the Statutes and other regulatory provisions that govern the life of the Faculties and Institutes, as well as to provide for the alignment of the administrative organization to the current legislation in force for the Bodies of the Holy See". The Pontiff also recalled the process that has already been initiated and is "aimed at reorganizing the Roman Pontifical Academic Institutions that are directly administered by the Apostolic See".

The undertaken redevelopment work has translated into concrete measures the call to seek structural operational synergies above all (but not only) with the network of other pontifical universities in Rome, while avoiding the risk of wasting precious energy and resources (for example, avoiding perpetuating "duplicate" teachings and academic paths already operating in other pontifical universities). These guidelines refer to, among other things, the strengthening of the faculty of missiology (the only one still operating within the Pontifical Universities in Rome) and the focus of the courses of the Faculty of Canon Law on the field of "missionary law", at the service of the newer Churches.

The reconfiguration process initiated within the Pontifical Urbaniana University is also portrayed in some comparative data. At the beginning of October 2023, 62 "full" and 113 "adjunct" or "visiting" professors worked at the University. Numbers that were greatly reduced, after verifying their non-usefulness in addition to the low number of students attending many courses. At the beginning of the coming academic year, there will be 47 "Full" professors at Urbaniana, and 40 adjunct or visiting lecturers. Whereas, for the University's overall management, the forecast budgets for 2025 estimate a cost reduction amounting to €1,514,180.

The Participants to the Plenary will be received at the papal Audience by Pope Francis on the morning of Friday, August 30. (Fides News Agency 29/8/2024)

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