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A Model for Catholic Higher Education
Who we are is a Catholic and Franciscan university that, in the words of current president, Father Terence Henry, TOR, “puts first things first.” By this, he means making the love of Jesus Christ and fidelity to the Catholic Church central to the educational mission.
According to the late John Paul II, authentic renewal of Catholic identity in schools of higher education cannot take place if evangelization and Catholicism are relegated to the Neumann Center or isolated in a Catholic studies program. The Catholic faith must permeate the school, from top to bottom, in classrooms, on playing fields, in residence halls.
At Franciscan University,
it does exactly that.
Pope John Paul II’s “Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities” shows the extent to which our schools must be academic institutions “in which Catholicism is vitally present and operative” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae). Every Catholic university, he wrote, must have the following “essential” characteristics:
- a Christian inspiration;
- a continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith upon the growing treasury of human knowledge;
- fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church;
- an institutional commitment to the service of the people of God and of
the human family.
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