With renewed confidence

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was more widespread than anticipated a year ago, and it is still severely affecting many countries.  These include the home countries of many of our students.  Our thoughts, prayers and sympathy go out to them. 

Despite the persisting uncertainties, we have good reasons to look ahead with renewed confidence. Indeed, scientific and technological progress has made vaccines and new treatments available to us in record time, providing grounds for hope that the ongoing global health crisis will be overcome.  Now is the time to globalise solidarity, so that everyone, even the poorest, may have access to the preventive and therapeutic services they need. These are days when it is necessary to continue cultivating hope, while at the same time renewing our commitment not to leave anyone behind and not to leave anyone alone.   

We are confident that the 2021-2022 Academic Year will usher in a progressive return to normality, in the awareness that flexibility will still be needed, and that our ultimate objective is not to go back to doing everything as before.  In fact, it will be necessary to continue tackling the challenges that lie ahead with the same creativity we displayed until now.  This approach will bear fruits with regard to research and teaching, and it will foster increased interaction between teachers and students, enhanced by the learning and communication technologies that are likely to become a consistent part of our daily lives, even when in-person teaching will be fully resumed. 

As we look ahead, we have been working towards offering new educational proposals that respond to the needs of the Church and of society.  These include the Licentiate in Judaic Studies and Jewish-Christian Relations, the Licentiate in Leadership and Management, the Diploma in Penal Justice and the reform of the Faculty of Philosophy's Licentiate programme.  The most recent innovations include the creation of the Institute of Anthropology, which will absorb and expand the mission hitherto entrusted to the Centre for the Child Protection.  

The academic year 2021-2022 coincides with a Jubilee Year marking 500 years since the conversion of St Ignatius of Loyola and the fourth centenary of his canonisation. The Gregorian University participates in these celebrations with joy, pledging its commitment to the common desire to “see all things new in Christ”, the motto of this Ignatian Year.  With equal joy we celebrate the fourth centenary of the death of St Robert Bellarmine, professor and rector of the Roman College, and the fourth centenary of the death of St John Berchmans, a student of the same College, on whose foundations the Gregorian University was erected.

In the following pages you will find many other reasons for renewed confidence; a confidence that we wish to share with our readers and friends, looking forward to building a better future together.

We wish you a good read!