VATICAN CITY, OCT. 17, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The Lateran University has inaugurated the “Karol Wojtyla Chair” in honor of the Pope’s thought.
As part of the university’s John Paul II Pontifical Institute for the Study of Marriage and the Family, the chair is established “to promote knowledge of Karol Wojtyla’s thought, of its sources and fruitfulness in the realm of philosophical and theological anthropology, guaranteeing systematic in-depth study,” an announcement said Tuesday.
“The cultural period in which we live presents moments of uncertainty which posit a new stage in thought,” before which believers must “allow a certain flexibility in knowledge of the world,” Monsignor Rino Fisichella, rector of the university and president of the institute, explained at the inauguration, according to the Italian episcopate’s SIR agency.
“We would like the chair to be a Benedictine endeavor, shaped by its two coordinates of ‘ora et labora,'” added professor Stanislaw Grygiel, the chair’s director.
Grygiel said that the idea is that the chair concentrate “on the great thematic nuclei elaborated by the one who would become Pope: the first dedicated to paternity, maternity and filiation; the second constituted by the call to Europe to breathe with two lungs; the third formed by that school of love for man indicated by truth, love and faith.”
The chair was established to make known the intuitions, writings and literary output of Karol Wojtyla, for years a professor at the universities of Krakow and Lublin. It will cooperate with other centers of the world studying the Pope’s thought.
The chair will either be directly involved in or support research, systematic courses and lesson cycles, congresses, publications, seminars and other initiatives.
It will also promote the formation of young people by granting scholarships for research on specific topics.
