The Gregorian aims to train open-minded people

Outgoing rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Fr François-Xavier Dumortier, discusses reform of the Rome institution

Jul 15, 2016

How does one go about reforming an institution as old as the Gregorian University in Rome?
Fr. Francois-Xavier Dumortier: It requires the ability to envision a future different from the one that managers call “a strategic plan." The university needs to understand itself as a living community rather than as a “job” or a task repeated year after year, as a church mission for which we are all accountable.

A university is not a business. It must maintain an atmosphere of freedom and creativity, a spirit of responsibility and service, a desire to stay focused on the present as well as the future, and listen carefully in the highly international environment in which we find ourselves.

Reform is an inner culture that invites us to ongoing self-reform. It demands calm determination to move forward, undistracted by issues of no consequence. Real reforms are achieved quietly, without publicity. Trumpeting them with great fanfare merely serves to mobilize every sort of conservative resistance, as we witness on a daily basis.

Your university trains seminarians, priests, lay people, members of religious orders, etc. What sort of training is needed for our time?
Fr Dumortier: We need training that will enable all of us to “explain our faith” in the midst of the intellectual challenges of our time. The purpose of a Catholic university today is thus to evangelize modern intelligence, in other words, to develop a profound, balanced and intelligently critical assessment of our culture, which is too heavily influenced by relativism, the ephemeral and the superficial. The Catholic university also endeavors to unite things that are sometimes separated, such as heart and mind, faith and reason, or the acquisition of a certain amount of knowledge and the ability to think for oneself.

In short, our concern is to train people who are open to the world in which we live and to what is most universal – individuals capable of committing themselves and serving, regardless of the task they are called upon to perform, and who are able to assume their responsibilities while remaining close to the most humble among us.

What makes the Gregorian a recognizably Jesuit institution today?
Fr Dumortier: Its identity is most visible in the number of Jesuits sent to the Gregorian. This year we have almost 90 Jesuit teachers and supervisors and 117 young Jesuit priests in training. Its most distinctively Jesuit feature is its Ignatian approach to teaching (1), which calls for individual mentoring, discernment on a daily basis – which is never limited solely to major decisions –, as well as solid, deeply grounded training.

The aspect that can only be recognized spiritually and in retrospect is what St Ignatius called his “way.” Students are influenced by their teachers’ availability to everyone and their straightforwardness, as well as the life of poverty and profound humility shown by those who have been not only their professors but also their “masters.”--Global Pulse