4000 students from over 200 universities around the world will spend Holy Week in Rome. For several months now they have been preparing for this year’s UNIV topic: “Can Christianity inspire a global culture?”
The students have been discussing in preparatory sessions whether our contemporary democratic society contains the religious roots needed to sustain a coherent culture and legal system.
This question was raised by Benedict XVI in an address given at La Sapienza University in Rome in 2008: “If our culture seeks only to build itself on the basis of the circle of its own argumentation, on what convinces it at the time, and if—anxious to preserve its secularism—it detaches itself from its life-giving roots, then it will not become more reasonable or purer, but will fall apart and disintegrate.”
The student groups come from thirty countries including the U.S., France, Spain, Russia, China (Hong Kong), and Australia. They bring with them varying and mutually-enriching perspectives on how Christianity can enliven a multicultural society.
UNIV 2010 seeks to contribute to the discussion of how the Christian conception of the human person and society can help build up an authentic global culture.
Speakers from the academic world who will take part include Joseph Pearce, a well-known author who teaches literature at Ave Maria University in Florida; Andrew Hegarty, director of the Thomas More Institute in London; and Jeffrey J. Langan, professor of humanistic studies at Holy Cross College in Indiana.
This year’s UNIV conference is the 43rd annual meeting since St. Josemaría Escrivá encouraged university professors and students in 1967 to come to Rome to reflect, close to the Holy Father, on ways Christian values can help sustain a truly human world culture.
