Cardinal Tolentino Mendonça participated in the Great Conference "What Spiritual Resources to Face the Future?" in the context of the closing celebrations of the 55th anniversary of Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
The Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, which oversees Catholic universities, who was once vice-rector, professor and student at UCP, returned to the university to speak about spiritual resources to face the future. He focused on five "elementary and universal" resources: the human person, amazement, relationship, accepting risk, and hope.
D. Manuel Clemente, Magno Chancellor of the Catholic University of Portugal and Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon, mentioned that "when universities were created, it was with the intention of finding people with knowledge and the will to have it," emphasizing the importance of there being availability "to learn, always.
For Isabel Capeloa Gil, Rector of UCP, "rethinking the world from a logic of social fraternity, according to the appeal of Pope Francis, is essential for us to have a future. A future that the Rector sees "with confidence", because "a Catholic university moves on the terrain of risk and hope, where knowledge is built in a perspective of service and not of domination or power, transforming the old disciplinary islands into large continents.
